





in Faith. 



Self-evident Statement of Truths that 
THE Church Avoids, viz : 

I. HOW THE APOSTLES SPOKE DIVERS 

TONGUES. 

II. HOW THEY DID MIRACLES. 

III. HOW THE TRINITY IS ONE. 

IV. HOW "FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY" 

WAS FOUNDED. 

V. WHO WROTE REVELATION. 



..BY 



Charles D. Stewart 



Published by 

UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO. 

Milwaukee. Wis. 




nUS'K FBil-WMTM ft I*., PniHTUt, (K-tM MAN* AM. 

Price 25 Cents. 



V. 



Five Points 
in Faith. 



Sf.lf-Evident Statement of Truths that. 
THE Church Avoids, viz : 

I. HOW THE APOSTLES SPOKE DIVERS 

TONGUES. 

II. HOW THEY DID MIRACLES. 

III. HOW THE TRINITY IS ONE. 

IV. HOW "FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY" 

WAS FOUNDED. 

V. WHO WROTE REVELATIOI 



BY 




Charles D. Stewart. 



ti 



Published by 
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO. 
Milwaukee. Wis.^^ 



AUG 



,'P\ 



p^si^ii 






^-7^ 



Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1896, by 

CHAS. D. STEWART. 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 



^ 



/ 



^of 



PREFACE. 



''I shall speak plainly, because I feel strongly, I will 
give voice to what many others feel, yet are still timid to 
utter — that trick and smartness are now striving to push 
old honesty out of the field of business. 

A merely passive virtue is scarcely a virtue at all. The 
young man who knows himself to be true, honorable, 
capable, dare not simply possess these qualities. All the 
greater is the duty laid upon him to manifest them actively 
in every possible form, and to conquer, so far as he may, 
whatever deceit, dishonor, or ignorant prejudice lies nearest 
to his path of life. The strength of each of you, if thus 
exercised, is greater than the proudest among you has 
ever reckoned. The strength of all of us combined, 
exerted against the evils we see, will jar their foundations, 
though they seem ever so firm. 

It is nearly useless to attempt to create a spirit which 
does not already exist. Unless you are waiting for some 
such utterances as these, I am speaking to the air." 

— Henry Wickham, of Richmond, Va. 



^ 



I. 



HOW THEY SPOKE DIVERS LANGUAGES. 



You are probably familiar with the belief that the 
apostles spoke in divers tongues. 

The Bible tells us that after the Holy Ghost descended 
upon their heads in tongues of fire, they went forth on the 
streets of Jerusalem and astonished the people by speaking 
man}^ languages. 

In the second chapter of Acts we read : ''Now when 
this was noised abroad the multitude came together and 
were confounded because that every man heard them speak 
in his own language, and they were all amazed and mar- 
velled, saying one to another : Behold, are not all these 
which speak, Galileans ? And now hear we every man in 
our own tongue wherein we were born. Parthians and 
Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and 
in Judea and Cappadocia in Pontus and in Asia, Phrygia 
and Pamphylia in Egypt and in parts of Libya about 
Cyrene and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes 
and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the 
wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed and 
in doubt, saying one to another : What meaneth this ? 



6 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Others mocking said : These men are full of new wine. " 

It is a familiar story. 

Thousands of preachers, graduates in theology, bible 
history and church government, from hundreds of orthodox 
colleges, have taught it to men and women and drawn a 
million morals on mockery and unbelief. Thousands of 
pastors have searched the Bible to tell their text in all its 
bearings until it would seem there was not much more to 
be discovered. Only this question remains — what did 
this speaking in divers languages consist of ? 

This simple question they overlook. 

Between the time the apostles spoke in divers tongues 
and the time the book of Acts was written, about thirty 
years, the churches mentioned in the bible were founded. 
By closely reading one of Paul's letters to the Corinthian 
churches, we are enabled to get some light on speaking 
divers languages. The facts are so truly ridiculous when fully 
realized that they are unbelievable unless we have a pre- 
vious knowledge of the depth of superstitious ignorance of 
the Corinthian Christians in whom Paul founded his 
doctrines. St. Paul's epistle is a letter, a prominent point 
of which was, that they should commence putting their 
savings away regularly so that when he came at the end of 
a )^ear he would not have to collect. It was one of his 
repeated doctrines that an apostle should not solicit money. 
He always arranged matters so that they would be pre- 
pared to give it to him. He told them the reason he 
gave notice a year ahead was that he would thereby be 
spared from troubling with such matters when he came. 
This epistle of I. Cor. also gives them advice on conducting 
themselves as members of the church. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 



It appears, according to Paul's remarks, that the 
Corinthians were depraved, as well as lewd, and St. Paul 
directs them with regard to regulating the Lord's supper. 
They were in the habit of having a Lord's supper every 
time they met. Each one struggled to get the most. In 
telling them not to continue this habit, Paul says ; I. Cor. 
11:20-21: "When ye come together therefore into one 
place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper, for in eating 
ever}^ one taketh before other his own supper ; and one is 
hungry and another is drunken." This sentence would 
certainly argue to a casual bible reader that the Corinthi- 
ans were depraved. I do not quote it with this idea. It 
is a question whether they were depraved or hungr}/^, and 
what the real reason might be. We cannot come hastily 
to correct conclusions in reading the Bible. Paul's in- 
timation certainly is that they were depraved, but as this 
book is dealing only with certain facts for the purpose of 
arriving at truth, I will not call this depravity until the 
circumstances are discovered in the light of fact. 

Taken however in connection with what follows, it is 
evident that the Corinthians were densely ignorant. And 
this is a mild way of observing that Paul, a graduate of the 
college of Tarsus, took advantage by playing on their 
superstition and vanity. After he explains to them the 
proper manner of partaking of the Lord's supper, he quotes 
Christ's remarks on the memorial meal and says : " For as 
often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do show 
the Lord's death till he come." The keyword of vantage 
in this sentence, according to Paul, is the word 'Meath," 
for he adds, "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread 
and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of 



8 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine 
himself and so let him eat that bread and drink of that cup. 
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and 
drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's 
body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among 
you and many sleep." 

It is safe to say that after this revelation the Corinth- 
ians either got something to eat without taxing the church 
funds or went hungr\\ Those who were weak and sickly 
among them, who had chronic rheumatism or hereditar}^ 
eczema or weak ankles or strabismus, knew at last what 
caused it. x\nd there must have been reminiscences of 
dead relatives who had ''gone to sleep." The Lord's 
supper must have been an awful ceremony after that. It 
is no wonder in the light of such methods that when St. 
Paul sent his young man Titus to them, he had occasion 
to write and say how he rejoiced to hear they received him 
with ''fear and trembling." It might seem strange, how- 
ever, that the same brand of church wine that made the 
Corinthians weak and sickly was supposed to be good for 
Timothy's dyspepsia, for when St. Paul made him bishop of 
EphesuSjhe told him to " drink no longer water " but " take 
a little wine for thy stomach's sake. " It might seem strange 
that St. Paul should add the qualification a " little wine " 
after he said to "drink no longer water." Possibly it was 
necessary for Timothy to go thirst}^ for his soul's sake. We 
cannot really understand these deep things, but it is incum- 
bent upon us to put the best interpretation on them. It 
is evident that St. Paul saw that if he did not get up the 
doctrine of the real presence the congregation would be 
drinking up all of Timothy's medicine. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 9 

There is one thing, however, given us to understand, 
and that is, the cause of the different action of this medicine. 
It all depended upon the circumstances under which it 
was taken and the occasional inability for ' 'discerning the 
Lord's body " on the part of the parish. Is it any wonder 
that the modern church founding its eternal doctrine on 
this inspiration of Paul's, should not allow the members to 
take communion themselves ? They might in a spell of 
absent-mindedness imagine it to be only wine and a wafer. 
So the priest takes all the risk of disease and damnation ; 
a happy improvement. The church, it is plain, has changed. 
Originally they lived in community of goods and the church 
dealt out, each day, enough for individual wants. There 
is no evidence that this was entirely in force among 
Paul's converts. They had separate homes, but the 
church hinted for the surplus and effected the same result. 
And when it came to keeping those who were out of work, 
St. Paul himself originated the remark that those who 
did not work could not eat. There is no doubt that if fail- 
ure to discern the real presence resulted in bodily ailment, 
it must have sometimes included ''that tired feeling.'* 
Before this doctrine was discovered, the men who did 
not work, really could not be blamed. And since the 
priest now takes this risk upon himself there is excuse 
for none. In this way the infallible church has perfected. 

This insight into the state of mind among the 
Corinthians, steels us for the contemplation of how 
they spoke in divers tongues. The peculiarity of this 
new religion which distinguished it from the Jewish 
system was that each member was to be a "son of 
God." Among the Jews, the prophets only were "sons 



10 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

of man." Christ said: '-'be ye sons of God." The 
new church took this in its Semitic sense and every man 
was to be not only a prophet but a miracle worker. It 
was certainly an inducement to join and send money to the 
''poor saints at Jerusalem". In Corinthians 12-13-14, St. 
Paul sets forth these gifts. In Chapter 12, verses 8, g and 
12, he explains: ''For to one is given by the Spirit the 
word of wisdom, to another the gift of healing by the 
same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another 
prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another 
divers kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of 
tongues." 

Let us now search for truth, without a single assump- 
tion or a false deduction. It is noticeable that the accom- 
plishment of speaking a strange language and that of 
interpretation were separate gifts. Therefore a man might,^- 
by an interpreter, speak in a strange tongue and be under- 
stood, but if another member of the church who did not 
have this second gift spoke in a strange tongue, the first 
member would not be able to know w^hat the brother said 
except through some one who had the gift of interpretation. 
Why was it necessary to have an interpreter ? Could not 
the man who spoke a strange tongue interpret for himself ? 
As speaking and interpreting, however, were separate gifts, 
it might be that a member could have the gift of speaking 
in a strange tongue and not have faith for the other gift. 
Now the question arises : — Did the speaker himself know 
what he said ? 

That a man did 7wt always interpret what he said him- 
self is evident in the fifth verse of this chapter. St. Paul 
says : "I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. II 

that ye prophesied ; for greater is he that prophesieth than 
he that speaketh with tongues except he interpret that the 
church may receive edifying." 

That a man could not always interpret is clearly seen 
in the 13th verse. It says: ^'^ Wherefore let him that 
speaketh an unknown tongue pray also that he may inter- 
pret." They were different gifts, coming by separate 
prayer. We have not yet discovered why a man did not 
interpret what he said himself. Maybe he was to pray 
that he might interpret for others. Commencing at verse 
27, St. Paul gives directions for speaking unknown tongues 
in meeting, as follows : *' If any man speak in an unknown 
tongue let it be by two or at the most by three and that by 
course (one after the other), and let one interpret; but if 
there be no interpreter let him speak to himself and to 
God." It is becoming evident that they did not know 
what they were talking about themselves. In Chapter 14, 
we read : '^ Follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts 
but rather that ye may prophecy. For he that speaketh 
in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto 
God, for no man understandeth him. Howbeit in the 
spirit he speaketh mysteries." We will not draw any 
more conclusion from this than is evident. We learn in 
the second sentence the same fact that one man was not 
understood by others. In the last sentence we see, how- 
ever, that if a man wishing to speak divers tongues came 
to church and there was no interpreter to tell what he said, 
and he sat down and talked to himself, he simply had faith 
that the Spirit was speaking '■'■ mysteries " to heaven. He 
believed this because St. Paul told him so. They were 
''mysteries." The man did not know what he said. St. 



12 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Paul had to explain the difficulty to him by saying the 
spirit was speaking *' ni3^steries. " The man's mouth was 
the medium of "'m3^stery. " The Spirit spoke to heaven. 

Any one of these verses might be ordinary evidence 
that an inspiree did not understand himself in this gift. 
The fact that interpreters were necessary would argue the 
case ordinarily, because if a man could understand himself 
he could tell what he meant. Bible justifiers might argue 
that it was simply a custom for a man not to interpret his 
own talk although he could have done it. 

This might be sufficient to settle the qualms of the 
faithful. A hundred points in the Bible stand upon such 
ingenuities. But the seven words beginning with "how- 
beit " are the words in the Bible that upon this subject are 
the key to truth. That these people did not know their 
own strange language is a fact according to the Bible. 
This inference cannot be shaken. 

Only one question remains. Were these strange ex- 
pressions actually living languages, although the Christians 
did not know what tongues they spoke ? If an Arabian or 
a Parthian or an Elamite had happened to hear, might not 
he have recognized his native tongue ? St. Paul rather 
accidentally left us some light upon this subject and inci- 
dentally dropped a hint to the Christians of Corinth. In 
Cor. 13:1, he says : "Though I speak with the tongues of 
men and of angels and have not charit}'-, I am become as 
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." Therefore, if a 
man with much faith and linguistic ambition met a for- 
eigner and tried his tongues and could not be understood ; 
if his Arabian or Mesopotamian had too much of a brogue 
for practical purposes, the believer would instantly decide 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 13 

he was talking with the ''tongues of angels." It was a 
happy provision on the part of St. Paul. It was none the 
less effective, because of the way he dropped the remark. 
He does not tell them this in a simple direct statement. 
It is often his method when he has something important 
to tell, to start by making something else the subject of his 
remark and dropping in his other communication as an 
assumption; as a truth that seems to be so much a part of 
his mind that he forgets to state it. The church is left to 
discern it by noticing the unintentional information. 
Another of his methods was to inculcate a new idea into 
these ignorant people by asking a question as something 
they had no doubt observed, but which he is teaching for 
the first time. Both methods flatter their vanity. He 
understood the value of assumption in throwing ignorance 
out of a questioning mood. In this method of deceit he is 
an expert, both in his logic and his teachings. 

Here then is the exact manner in which the gift of 
divers tongues operated. A man who spoke by gift in an 
unknown tongue, did not know what he was saying unless 
he met a brother who felt inspired to interpret and who 
would tell him what he probably meant. If he felt called 
upon to express some meaningless talk and no one felt 
inspired to interpret, the same faith that inspired him to 
say the strange expressions taught him to believe the 
Spirit was talking to God. The man who had the gift of 
speaking unknown tongues might get the faith by prayer 
by which he could interpret. It required a separate faith. 
In this case he could speak in unknown tongues, then say 
something in his own language and believe that was what 
he meant. It merely took faith. The Corinthians seem 



14 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

to have been good subjects for faith after they understood 
the philosophy of the Holy Ghost. 

The Holy Ghost was a Semitic idea rather foreign to 
the Corinthian mind. They had plenty of superstition but 
Paul had difficulty in grafting the Semitic point of view into 
the Greek. They believed in the Holy Ghost and evi- 
dentty everything else of this nature. Being such a valuable 
possession they wished to be sure they had it and desired 
some infallible evidence. This was surely a hard point for 
St. Paul to solve. It is usually considered that when a 
man has the Holy Ghost he knows it. Paul told then that 
they must be ''reprobates" if they had the Holy Ghost 
and did not know it. The Holy Ghost seems to have been 
an assumption resulting from a man's taking it on him- 
self. The very fact that the Corinthians asked this 
question, however, shows that they did not have the 
Semitic point of view, so Paul had to give a sure symp- 
tom. He wrote. Cor. 12:3: "No man can sa}^ Jesus is 
the Lord but b}' the Holy Ghost." 

Of course it occurred to man}^ of the Corinthians that 
they had already said that. If a man had not made the 
statement, all that would be necessary would be for him to 
see if he could sa}' it. If he succeeded he must have had 
the Holy Ghost. After that, if he felt inspired to talk the 
tongues of angels, or interpret, he would naturally have to 
be correct and infallible. The acknowledgment was 
simply priming the pump of faith. It served Paul's pur- 
poses. 

Speaking in inspired tongues in church was exactly as 
follows, according to the Bible : 

When the congregation met, an3'one whom the Holy 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 15 

Ghost moved would get up and speak a few words of wis- 
dom or prophesy a while. Then if a brother felt moved to 
speak mysteries of the Holy Ghost he would arise and sub- 
mit fully to the influence of inspiration, suppressing, of 
course, both his own will and intelligence, and then speak. 
The very fact that he said something that was not the 
result of forethought — something which he probably could 
not say again, and which, if repeated, would put him at a 
loss to explain why he said what he did rather than some 
thing else, would certainly be evidence that it was the pro- 
duct of divine chance. He would arise, for instance, and 
remark: ^^Brnonojy knanth balthy bo?" hingemaken fthengle bat 
tome dogan habbei'flong,^^ and continue in that strain until 
the Holy Ghost told him to sit down. This, of course, 
would be a mystery that no one could understand, not 
even the speaker. In case, however, if some one felt 
inspired to interpret that evening, he would arise and tell 
what it meant. This may sound ridiculous to those who 
have not faith. It is not burlesque. Anyone who says 
that I am burlesqueing the church would have made a poor 
member of the Corinthian church of Christ. 

It is a plain truth of the Bible plainly told. 

If people like to hear a minister expand the scene of 
Pentecost and tell how the apostles came upon the street 
when about two million Hebrews from all parts of the 
civilized world were there; if they like to have him make 
the picture realistic, and describe the varied garbs and the 
grandeur of the scene, they cannot object when the same 
methods are applied to all parts of the Bible. If any man 
doubts this story he has not faith. If any Christian says 
this is ridicule he merely says the Bible is ridiculous. It 



16 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

would become him better to examine the divers languages 
just written and pray for strength to sa}^ what it means. 
Outside of this strange sentence, however, there is no 
ridicule. Whether it is sarcastic I cannot say ; I do not 
know what it means. It is divers tongues. If any one 
can interpret it and find it is sarcastic I may admit that 
the Holy Ghost is ridiculing the church. 

Suppose that these poor people or mutual frauds or 
whatever they were, really had "faith;" suppose even 
that they did not have "faith," but merely superstition ; 
would not this juggling with the unknowable become 
fascinating ? Was it not an unique improvement upon 
the signs and omens connected with stubbing one's toe or 
having an itchy palm ? It would be worth while for a 
Corinthian to arise, throw himself into a state of unpre- 
meditation and let the Spirit use his voice to say: ^' JVgar- 
star iltagorin bli monlatigor jnhtr bangsterodigastentatantby. 
J7'g ilatas hej'tyajallimentolong,''' just to discover when the 
interpreter arose what the Spirit had expressed. There is 
no telling what it might mean. 

Consider the Corinthian Christian and you will see 
that this was the most seductive gift in the catalogue. 
It would become as enticing as a game of chance. There 
was a vast difference between this gift and prophesying. 
In prophesying, a man had to express an intelligible idea; 
he had to use his mind merely to say something. The 
inspiration was not so self-evident to himself. When he 
got through it was a prophecy, an opinion ; that was all. 
He sat down. In speaking divers tongues he waited to 
learn what thought he had been the instrument of expres- 
sing. If he believed, it was exciting. It was a game of 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 17 

ghost. Its action is evident. It would naturally grow on 
the ones who believed. That it did have this effect is 
evident in the fact that Paul had to make a rule repressive 
by saying : "If any man speak in an unknown tongue let 
it be by two or at the most by three, and that by course; 
and let one interpret." Of all the gifts, this is the only 
one upon which he had to write more than a chapter to 
adroitly regulate ; at the same time justifying it by praise. 

This is proof upon proof that speaking in divers 
tongues is as I say. Why ? Because, if Paul wrote a 
chapter to regulate the indulgence of this gift alone, it 
shows there was a tendency to indulge it to the detriment 
of other gifts. If there was a tendency to overdo it, there 
was a reason. When we view this speaking in divers 
tongues as it was, we see the reason. The seven words, 
''Howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries," taken in 
connection with the other verses, show what this gift was. 
Its explanation of the rest corroborates the decision. 

Why was this gift gotten up ? To fulfil prophecy. 
St. Paul says, Cor. 14:21: "In the law it is written, with 
men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto the 
people; and yet, for all that, they will not hear me, saith 
the Lord." St. Paul evidently reasoned that the way to 
have prophecy fulfilled was to go to work and fulfil it. 

In I. Cor. 14:22-23-24, St. Paul says : "Wherefore 
tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them 
that believe not ; but prophesying serveth not for them 
which believe not, but for them which believe. If, there- 
fore, the whole church be come together into one place 
and all speak with tongues and there come in those that 
are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are 



18 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

mad ? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that 
believeth not or one unlearned, he is convinced of all; he 
is judged of all. And thus are the secrets of his heart 
made manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he will 
worship and report that God is in 3'ou of a truth." 

Let us analyze this statement. 

He is arguing that they should not speak in divers 
tongues too much, but should prefer prophecy. In this 
connection he says that speaking divers tongues is for a 
sign to others, and prophesying for them which believe. 
Therefore, it would seem that he prefers the gift that is a 
sign for believers. Then he immediately states that if 
they speak divers tongues visitors will think them mad. 
Then he argues that prophesying will convert visitors and 
divers tongues will not. Divers tongues is to strengthen 
the faith of them that believe. How then, in the name of 
sense, is divers tongues a sign to others ? All that we can 
get out of this, is that it is a sign to others that the Christ- 
ians were mad. Was Paul mad ? 

One fact is evident. Paul, being a linguist, saw that 
this fallacy would not live long with outsiders. If men 
who knew language came in and heard a whole roomful 
speak and not a gibberish among them with a linguistic 
root for recognition, the delusion would be laughed at. 
Paul, therefore, is much afraid the ''unlearned" might 
come in. Now we have seen that it was to the unlearned, 
like the Christians themselves, that this gift appealed. An 
unlearned man w^ho was told they were speaking foreign 
languages is the one who would most likely be awed. He 
could not deny it. Paul always covered his points as best 
he could. The fact is, Paul was struggling with a danger- 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 19 

ous gift. He wanted the gift to fulfil prophecy, but for 
various reasons he wished to regulate it without discover- 
ing his motive. He wanted to keep the Holy Ghost from 
having its own wa}^ too much. The real solution, if he 
could have said it, would have been effected by studying 
the visitor closely and deciding whether he was the proper 
kind. If he was, some one could speak Angelic for a 
while. Thus St. Paul's theory, that it was for edifying 
others, could be carried out. 

Archbishop Gibbons, in his book, ''The Faith of Our 
Fathers," tells us in his chapter on the sacrament of con- 
firmation, that the reason the laying on of hands and the 
giving of the Holy Ghost does not result now in the gift of 
unknown tongues, is that it was intended originally to 
edify the onlooker, and it is not necessary now because the 
church is established. This agrees partly with Paul. But 
Paul says in I Cor. 13:4: "He that speaketh an unknown 
tongue edifieth himself, but he that prophesieth edifieth 
the church." He then makes this distinction in favor of 
prophecy — prophecy edifies the church and divers tongues 
only edifies the speaker, i. e. , not the church. If unknow^n 
tongues did not edify the church, how could it edify out- 
siders ? How does it edify the man himself ? By the 
Spirit speaking "mysteries." 

Here is other evidence of what divers tongues was. 
In Cor. 14:14 Paul says: "For if I pray in an unknown 
tongue my spirit prayeth but my understanding is unfruit- 
ful. What is it then ? I will pray with the spirit and I 
will pray with the understanding also." Thus we see 
again that a man who even prayed in an unknown tongue 
did not know what he was saying. He did not do it with 



20 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

his understanding. Paul insisted on the faith that brings 
interpretation, so that a man would be able to tell himself 
what he was praying for. When St. Paul says that un- 
known tongues is a sign for unbelievers, and also that it 
makes unbelievers think them crazy, and then states that 
it is only to edify a man himself, and in another place 
states that it does not even edify a man when he prays 
with them, and still praises the gift — which are you going 
to believe. How did Archbishop Gibbons get at what he 
believed ? Did he decide by lot or please his fancy ? 

The evidence is that Paul, the linguist, started a fraud 
that took better than he thought ; it became a craze ; it had 
elements he did not reckon on. We learn in the chapters 
noted that they spoke in unknown tongues, they blessed 
in unknown tongues, they prayed in unknown tongues and 
sang in unknown tongues, and for all a man knew w^ho did 
not have the gift of interpretation, he might have been 
cursing in unknown tongues. No wonder Paul saw the 
''gift" was getting beyond control. Paul wanted to 
govern the gift that was bringing danger of exposure. He 
praised the fraud because he saw its value as a tool for 
superstition and wished to make safe use of it. He could 
not do it without telling them the truth. This would 
weaken their faith ; therefore all his fallacious arguments. 

Let us examine it closely. Why did he say that if 
two or three spoke in succession in a meeting only one 
should interpret ? It can be imagined that all the 
pleasures and enticements in the game of ghost consisted 
in being the speaker in unknown tongues and letting some 
one else do the interpreting. That was where the novelty 
lay. Why should a man get up and speak some Angelic 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 21 

and then say it meant so and so ? He might as well say 
his thought at first. When Paul praises unknown tongues 
and declares '* I would that ye all spake with tongues," 
and then calls praying with unknown tongues praying with 
the spirit, and then insists on praying with both the 
spirit and the understanding, — is it not ridiculous ? 

It can be seen that there was little inducement to get 
up and translate another man's lingo. It took ingenuity, 
and the interest was all on the other side. They all wished 
to be the linguists ; therefore there was a dearth of inter- 
preters, and Paul had to encourage the art. But suppos- 
ing a man had a revelation in an unknown tongue, and 
after he delivered it two interpretersa rose simultaneously 
to tell what it meant. One would give way to the other. 
Would it not be interesting to the church to know, 
after the inspiration, whether the silent interpreter 
intended to give the same rendering as the one who spoke ? 
It was necessary to limit this business to three linguists, 
and as interpretation came by inspiration, Paul as much 
as told them to be careful that not more than one inter- 
preter was inspired in meeting. If one man did not like 
to try the whole job it regulated the talking for that 
meeting. 

Is it not enough to make a man blush for a fellow 
being who contends that he believes this stuff to be a part of 
inspired truth on which man's salvation depends ? It takes 
temerity to state the foolish facts. 

Christian history tells us that Luke, who wrote the 
gospel and the book of Acts, was a companion and follower 
of Paul, from whom he got many, if not all, of tis facts. 
Whether or not this is true, there is evidence of the same 



22 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

hand in the epistles, in Luke and in Acts, and, as I 
intend to show, another book of the Bible. Acts, they 
say, was not written earlier than the year 63. The incident 
of the apostles speaking divers tongues was then at least 
thirty 3'ears past. It was a story of a past event. If Paul 
had written an account of how the Corinthians spoke 
divers tongues, thirty 3-ears after his epistle was sent, is it 
not likely that he would have given a long list of the many 
and special tongues they spoke in meeting ? The same 
man who made the Corinthians believe they spoke foreign 
languages was the influence over the man who wrote Acts. 
In fact, it is likely that Paul, the linguist, originated the 
scheme, and that such a practice was not gotten up at the 
time the apostles appeared during Pentecost, some thirty 
years before Acts was written. Paul could have forged it 
all without fear of refutal. There were no printing presses; 
the book was only intended for the church itself. If the 
incident had occurred, eleven men who were considered 
drunk with ■•' new wine" would not have left much im- 
pression on over two million Jews, if there were so man}" 
there. These people all scattered to the countries from 
which they came. The stor}' was safe. 

St. Luke, however, specifies about all the languages 
under the eastern skies as having been spoken by the 
eleven apostles. Imagine a crowd of people saying 
together in a score of languages, •'• Behold, are not these 
which speak Galileans. And now hear we every man in 
cur own tongue wherein we were born, Parthians and 
Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in ^Mesopotamia and 
and in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and in Asia, 
Phrygia and Pamphylia in Eg3-pt and in the parts of 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 23 

Libya, about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and 
proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak 
in our tongues the wonderful words of God." All this is 
put into the mouths of the many-tongued audience. And 
all this time eleven apostles are supposed to have been 
speaking all these languages. And some one was there to 
take down what the crowd exclaimed. Why does not the 
writer of Acts state the report and tell his authority with- 
out trying to make it so impossibly realistic ? It probably 
never happened. 

And Peter stood up and said: *'For these are not 
drunken, seeing it is but the third hour of the da}^" Cir- 
cumstantial evidence coming from what Paul in the year 
63 is said to have told Luke that Peter said, about the 
year 31, goes to show that they were not ''full of wine," 
because it was so early they would not have had time to 
become drunk. Therefore they spoke divers languages. 
This is equal to Luke's little nicety of evidence which says 
that Gabriel appeared to Zacharias on the ''right" side of 
the altar, rather than on the left. And still he did not 
know that the Jews sealed up the tomb of Christ. 

One thing is evident. If the Corinthians could not 
speak divers languages by the Holy Ghost, the apostles 
could not, unless the Holy Ghost had deteriorated badly 
in a short time. 

Is it not shameful that these things are believed in 
this age of enlightenment and freedom in the United States 
of America ? Its belief, coupled with ingenuity and a man's 
willingness to prostitute his own intellect will make him 
Professor in a sectarian college and add five capital letters 
to the other end of his name. Is it not a consolation, 



24 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

however, to know that there is at least one institution of 
learning in this country, founded, not on the obeisance of 
a few millions to a doctrinal prejudice, but by one man's 
munificence to the cause of unhampered education ? Is it 
not consoling to know that this universit}^ is acquiring the 
men who have shown enough symptoms of brains to be 
out of sympathy with orthodoxy ? And is it not a grand 
privilege for a man who has taken up the Bible conscien- 
tiousl}' to see what is in it, to state plainly what he finds 
in the Bible ? If the writer of this book finds he is an 
awful infidel the shock will not be as great as w^hen he dis- 
covered that he had been going to church for years and 
had not been told the most evident facts by the men whose 
vocation is supposed to be that of telling the truth. 



II. 



HOW THEY DID MIRACLES. 



The two sides of the miracle question usually stand 
as follows : 

One man says miracles were done because the Bible 
says so. The other man says miracles were not done 
because nature denies the Bible. One man breaks the 
laws of nature on a piece of poor literature with a bad 
history. The other man is loyal to his environment ; to 
what the Creator has put before him in his lifetime ; the 
conditions that form the mind by which he conducts him- 
self, and says the laws of nature being inviolable to man, 
God never broke them for man's edification. For my part, 
if there were no more proof, I would rather be the latter ; 
a patriot to God's universe ; a learner of the lesson he has 
seen fit to place before me. 

God will damn no man for believing God's object 
lesson. An infidel is a man who believes the Bible. 

Denial is the usual argument of busy humanity ; of 
those who believe the theologians and those who believe 
themselves. The result is that the Bible idolaters, not 
being able to prove that miracles were done, wind up by 



26 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

saying that, anyway, if any one wishes to prove that they 
were not, he will have a hard job. It is interesting to 
notice how often they say this. Cardinal Manning has 
said it for the Catholics, and Prof. G. P. Fisher for the 
Protestants. 

George Park Fisher, D. D., L.L. D., professor of 
ecclesiastical history in Yale college and author of **The 
Christian Religion," a text book studied by the Chautau- 
quans, says: "But the principal thing which I wish to 
say under this head is that the burden of disproving 
Christianity and demonstrating that it rests on a false 
foundation, properl}^ falls on the assailing party ; and 
further, to intimate that the task is not a light one." This 
is the '•' principal thing " he has to sa}-. This is the princi- 
pal remark they all have to make. What is it ? The mere 
information that if Christianity is proven to be false, un- 
believers will have to do it. Did any one ever get an idea 
that the God-grammarians would do it ? That is not their 
trade. Credit their candor. 

Any man who has time to study the Bible can solve 
the miracle question. It is much easier than the gold and 
silver question. He can discard all arguments ever em- 
plo3^ed and find two new ones that are proofs. He can 
throw away either one and the other will stand alone. Let 
us look for them. 

In earnestly studying this subject of miracles, we must 
remember that the books of the Bible, telling of the 
miracles done at the time of Christ, were written from 
thirty to forty years afterwards. If we wish to know facts, 
we must take writings and directions intended for persons 
who w^ere supposed to be doing miracles at the time the 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 27 

directions were written. In the 13th chapter of I. Corinthi- 
ans, St. Paul explains and descants upon the different 
spiritual gifts of the Holy Ghost, and finds it necessary to 
explain at length that "Now there are diversities of gifts, 
but the same Spirit. " This explanation is necessary because 
it was an age of spirits. There were spirits of divination 
and spirits of healing and devils of different diseases. If 
a man had fits he was possessed of a devil which threw him 
into the water or into the fire with seemingly malicious 
motives and made him foam at the mouth. The Bible 
then states, as a doctor might have done, that the man 
then slept. Mary Magdalen was possessed of seven devils, 
and the account was written by someone who believed. 
They tell us one man was so full of the devil that he had 
enough devils in him to fill and disconcert a whole herd of 
swine so that they ran into the sea and were drowned, 
both hogs and devils. It was a good way of getting rid of 
the devils. The Corinthians would naturally think that 
each gift was the manifestation of a special spirit, so it is 
explained to them that they possess but one spirit that 
does it all. 

After St. Paul informs his new church that all these 
gifts are due to one Spirit, the Holy Ghost, he says, in 
verse 28 : *' And God hath set some in his church ; first, 
apostles ; secondarily, prophets ; thirdly, teachers ; after 
that, miracles; then gifts of healings; helps ; governments; 
diversity of tongues." Did you ever hear this verse made 
the subject of a sermon ? I never did. Whether or not 
the preachers have studied the Bible enough to know what 
it means, and therefore avoid it, I do not know. This is a 
list of the comparative honors of the different gifts. It is 



28 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

the schedule of honor in use among Paul's churches, — the 
table of vanity. Paul tells the churches in the next verse 
that every man cannot be everything on the list by asking: 
*'Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? 
Are all workers of miracles ? Have all the gifts of healing ? 
Do all speak with tongues ? Do all interpret ? " As Paul is 
evidently teaching them this fact, they might have appro 
priately replied that they knew nothing about it until St. 
Paul told them. We will eventually see into Paul's 
knowledge of vanity, however. ' 

The next verse, I Cor. 12:31, is the key to this table 
of vanity. It says: "But covet earnestly the best gifts 
and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way." 

Why should they covet ? God was supposed, through 
the Holy Ghost, to confer different gifts upon these people. 
Now, if God saw fit to give a man the gift of healing or the 
gift of tongues, why should Paul tell them to aspire to 
certain gifts ? Did a man dictate to God what he should 
be ? Why should he choose ? Why should he '' aspire ? " 
Is not the Holy Ghost infallible ? Is not God omniscient ? 
Is this "humility ? " 

If God, in those days, saw fit to make a man a healer 
of the sick, why should he aspire to be a prophet — a man 
who noticed the visitor who cam.e into church and prophe- 
sied in such a way that he would feel that "thus are the 
secrets of his heart made manifest" — a fortune teller ? In 
short, why was it necessary for St. Paul to think up and write 
out this graduated list of honor ? The reason is seen in the 
fact that he takes the gifts that were not easy frauds and 
places them low on his table of vanity. In fact, if some 
of these gifts had not been so shaky as not to stand the 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 29 

test of proof, he would not have seen the necessity of get- 
ting up this scheme when he started his church. 

Let us examine it on that basis. First come apostles. 
Paul was an apostle, — of course that is highest. Next 
come prophets. There is little danger in being a prophet. 
A man may prophesy a hundred years ahead and never live 
to know the Holy Ghost was mistaken. If he uses good 
judgment a certain amount comes true, and the ones that 
happen are the ones that count. Fortune-telling is run on 
that score. Fortune-telling is a monetary success to-day. 
"Thirdly come teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of 
healing. " It is noticeable that there is a distinction between 
doing a miracle and curing a disease, — between coming 
into church and saying you did a random miracle, such as 
killing a fig tree by word of mouth, and claiming you had 
healed sick people by touch. A miracle might be a random 
doing at odd times and told afterward. No one could 
insist upon a Christian turning a halbert into a handsaw 
without seeming to trifle with his powers. He could 
refuse. However, if a man got the name of curing the 
diseased, sick persons might be brought to him, and in 
the name of love and humanity he could make no excuse. 
That is why miraculous healing is not included in the 
general head of miracle but is made a separate kind of gift. 
It is for the purpose of getting it lower on the list. 

It was only fifth honor, this ability to benefit the weak; 
the lame ; the unfortunate. Fortune-telling was next to 
the highest. 

The reason it is placed lower in honor is to influence 
the church members not to try it ; not to aspire to it ; not, 
in fact, to get the reputation of healing. St. Paul allowed 



30 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

useless miracles to stand fairly high because he knew 
there was an ingredient of the liar in such superstitious 
communities which could be depended upon to keep up the 
name of miracle. He knew human nature. There would 
be a certain number of members who had faith and a cer- 
tain number who were liars. This appealing to them to 
avoid certain gifts by the strongest influence he knew, 
vanity, not only kept believers from attempting healing 
and thus undeceiving themselves, but it warded off the 
liars before they had time to make a name for healing and 
thus, by being called upon, making a failure, and undeceiv- 
ing not only the faithful but outsiders. 

He appealed to them through the impulse that moves 
a liar — vanity. 

There was, no doubt, a certain amount of faith cure 
then as now. If a credulous and anxious person who was 
sick came to a Christian and believed he was well, it would 
keep up the gift of healing fairly well. However, the new 
sect was taught not to aspire to it. If St. Paul had it fixed 
so that healing was not attempted except upon those who 
were credulous enough to come without urging, it could be 
depended upon that they would be credulous enough to 
get well. Faith would thus be added to the elect. If they 
failed, there was Paul's statement that all were not given 
the same gifts, and it was a higher gift to simply be wise 
and teach. Not only the outsiders, but Christians 
themselves could be the dupes of St. Paul by means 
of this studied scheme. The speaking of divers tongues 
was placed seventh and last in honor. This was the great 
hitch among all the gifts. If St. Paul had known how it 
was going to operate he might never have encouraged it. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 31 

A man might be a fortune teller and prophesy with respect- 
able results ; he might teach ; he might speak words of 
wisdom. No doubt, some would lie about miracles, and 
it is likely some persons who had enough faith to come 
might imagine themselves well. It happens to-day. But 
if a Corinthian haver of the Holy Ghost went up to an 
Arabian and talked, the Spirit would have to stand a purely 
supernatural test upon the spot. St. Paul was a great 
linguist, and as the speaking in divers tongues proved 
so fascinating to the church he saw its danger to himself. 
It not only appealed to them by its superstitious communi- 
cation with the Holy Ghost, but as the Corinthians were 
ignorant, this mark of linguistic learning was doubly fas- 
cinating. And withal it was so easy to do. 

St. Paul, being a linguist, knew that if this were 
indulged in to a great extent there would never be a cor- 
roboration that they spoke with the tongues of men. There 
might be linguistic visitors who would make corrobora- 
tion to the opposite effect. It was put at the lowest 
rating. The fact that this lowest honor upon the list is 
the only one upon which St. Paul writes separately and 
discourages in a whole chapter, while non-committally 
praising it, proves the motive by which this schedule of 
honor was gotten up. Look at that list of honor — " firstly," 
''secondarily," — and the appeal to vanity. 

Why was prophesying put at the head of the list ? 
For this reason : When healing and divers tongues were 
placed so low as to be undesirable there would be nothing 
left that was self-evidently miraculous, excepting prophecy. 
St. Paul had much confidence in prophecy or fortune-tell- 
ing as a means of affecting beholders and the faithful. 



32 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Those prophecies that turned out well would certainly be 
miraculous. It would compensate for those that did not 
eventuate, for such prophecies would be spoken by those 
who imagined they had the gift, but were mistaken. It 
was the only fraud that was promising and safe. It had to 
be made the most of. It was the only mystic lever. St. 
Paul placed this gift next to the apostleship. 

This schedule of honor was gotten up to keep the 
church members from attempting things that were impos- 
sible, by placing miracles, healing and divers tongues low 
in honor and then appealing to vanity. It proves that 
miracles were a fraud and an impossibility at that time. 

If the gifts of healing and speaking tongues came from 
a divine power as is claimed, and if the Holy Ghost selec- 
ted certain persons for certain gifts, what was the use of 
this table of honor ? Suppose a believer tried to heal a 
sick man and failed. It would be no harm, would it ? He 
would never get a name for healing, unless he was a liar, 
and the church would not be embarrassed. If the Holy 
Ghost operated as is said, it would be worth a man's try- 
ing to discover his powers. But suppose a man discovered 
that he could actually heal the sick and mend the maim, 
and told it, and others were brought to him ; why should 
this be placed low in estimation ? Would it not be grand 
and wonderful and humane ? As long as the Holy Ghost 
saw fit to give to man the power to heal, was it not the 
highest humanity of which he could be capable ? Again, 
why should St. Paul get up this table of vanity ? Because 
there were impossibilities. The table is a fraud. It was 
intended to keep the faithful from attempting certain 
things. To those who tried miracles and failed it offered 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 33 

the consolation of vanity. Healing was only fifth honor 
anyway. Such were called to prophesy. It was intended 
to regulate the lies of the liars by the main motive of lying 
— vanit3^ 

Did St. Paul believe in miracles and the infallible 
Holy Ghost ? If he had believed he would not have 
originated this scheme. 

Could the Corinthians do miracles ? We see they 
could not. The same man who was a companion of Luke 
and who associated with Barnabas, and who had Mark for a 
servant, proves they could not. Paul says a righteous lie 
i^ not punishable. He was one of the apostles ; a chosen 
man by ''revelation;" a companion of the authors of 
eternal truth. 

This was but a short time after the ministry of Christ. 
Were miracles ever done ? If the same eternal Holy 
Ghost could not do miracles in the year 45 or 50 it could 
not do them in the year 30. It is not supposable that the 
Holy Ghost spoiled. Miracles were never done. The 
accounts in Acts and the Gospels, we are told, were written 
from fifty to seventy years after the events were supposed 
to have happened. They were stories intended as a 
history for the faithful. They might be anything that 
suited the author's notion. The epistles were written 
directly to the churches to contend with the difficulties. 
They were not written for the public at large. In them 
we discover the truth. Thanks to science, the printing 
press got hold of them and the dark ages began to clear 
up. Were miracles ever done ? We discovered the}^ were 
not. We have the proof. 



34 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Let US put aside the evidence and prove the fact once 
more. It is pleasant to serve the truth. 

Christians make much objection to the rational Bible 
searchers' method of noticing that the stories in the differ- 
ent books do not agree, and in fact are contradictory. The 
Bible idolaters argue the liability of human testimony 
to error in spite of its being inspired. To serve this point 
they have invented a new phrase, "divine dictation," to 
show that inspiration does not have this sense ; that it has 
been misunderstood. For the sake of accommodation, let 
us avoid this perfectly just method of comparing testi- 
mon}'. We will not notice contradictions unless an author 
denies his own statement as well as nature in the same 
stor}^, and unless we can explain why he did it. 

Let us take a revelation first, as shown in the story of 
Zacharias and the annunciation of John, told only in the 
book of Luke. This gospel is the only one with an apolo- 
getic introduction. It is the only one that tells of the 
annunciation to Zacharias, the Pharisee priest. 

While Zacharias was standing in the holy place of the 
temple burning incense, '* there appeared to him an angel 
of the Lord standing on the right hand side of the altar of 
incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was much 
troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto 
him : Fear not Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard and thy 
wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call 
his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness, 
and many shall rejoice at his birth. And many of the 
children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. 
And he shall go before him (Christ) in the spirit and power 
of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 35 

and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just ; to make 
ready a people prepared for the Lord. And Zacharias said 
unto the angel : Whereby shall I know this, for I am an 
old man and my wife well stricken in years ? And the 
angel answering him, said : I am Gabriel that stand in 
the presence of the Lord ; and am sent to speak unto thee, 
and to show thee these glad tidings. And behold thou 
shalt be dumb and not able to speak until the day that 
these things are performed because thou believest not my 
words which shall be fulfilled in their season. And the 
people waited for Zacharias and marvelled that he tarried 
so long in the temple ; for he beckoned unto them and 
remained speechless." 

A plain story of an actual happening does not contra- 
dict itself because nature is consistent. It is when a man 
makes up a story to carry out several points that he either 
uncovers one point trying to cover another, or tells a tale 
that is artificial and exposes his lie. 

Imagine a man standing in the quiet holy place of the 
temple suddenly visited by Gabriel ; the angel that stands 
next to the throne of God, clothed in truth and invested 
with the divine glory of a million ages. That angel tells 
Zacharias that his wife will have a son. Zacharias wants 
a sign. Gabriel did not seem to be much of a sign to him. 
One would think Zacharias had been used to seeing 
Gabriel every day if it were not for the statement that 
Gabriel had to introduce himself. 

Can any greater sign present itself to the human intel- 
lect than the appearance of an arch-angel from heaven ? 
Can it be imagined ? Would it be in human nature to ask 
for more of a sign ? But Zacharias wanted a sign. 



36 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

It might seem that Zacharias wanted more of a sign 
because the proposed event w^as so utterly inconceivable 
and more than ordinarily impossible that Zacharias could 
not believe. The angel first addressed him in the follow- 
ing words : " Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard 
and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son." Zacharias 
had been praying for a son. He thought it possible that 
God would interpose and give him one in an ordinary way. 
The angel Gabriel, in all his glory, came and told him his 
prayer was answered. Zacharias could not believe it, how- 
ever, without a sign, because himself and Elizabeth were 
well stricken in years. What was he praying for ? 

Then we read that John was born, -'-'and it came to 
pass that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the 
child ; and they called him Zacharias after the name of his 
father. And his mother answered and said : Not so, but 
he shall be called John. And they said unto her : There is 
none of thy kindred that is called by this name. And they 
made signs to his father how he would have him called. 
And he asked for a writing table and wrote, saying his 
name is John. And they marvelled all." 

It is noticeable that Zacharias has also become deaf 
to suit the emergency. They made signs to him. Why 
was it that they ''marvelled all?" Because whoever 
wrote this story wants to prove it is wonderful that Eliza- 
beth said he should be called John, and Zacharias, who 
could not hear, wrote the same thing. It is evident then 
that Zacharias in all these months had not written a line 
to his wife, although the story says he went home after the 
revelation. It must have been revealed to her also. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 37 

Why is this story so laughably artificial ? Because it 
was gotten up with a motive ; it is a case of write-up reve- 
lation. The book of Luke is the only one of the gospels 
that tells us anything about the family relationship of John 
and Christ. It is the only one that tells us of an annunci- 
ation of John's birth to Zacharias. It is the only one that 
tells us, that when the angel revealed to Mary that she 
would have a son, he also revealed to her that it had been 
revealed to Elizabeth, through Zacharias, that she would 
have a son. If it were not for this book we would know 
nothing about the Holy Famity circle. This story is the 
result of trying to prove Christ's divinity by a more com- 
plete and complicated method than the other authors use. 
The other three simply have John appear in the wilderness 
preaching Christ with not a word about who he was or 
where he came from. As Christ was preceded by John, 
who was to bear witness to him, Christ's divinity rests first 
on John's testimony. The three writers who say nothing 
of divine intercession in John's birth, dwell strongly on the 
appearance of the dove at Christ's baptism. John and 
Christ are not supposed to know each other. St. John has 
the Baptist to say: '^I knew him not." And yet their mothers 
were cousins ; they lived many years in the same country; 
when the annunciation came, Mary went to visit Elizabeth, 
and according to all the *' beautiful story" I have read, 
they dwelt in divine rapture for three months ; they were 
conscious of their divine destiny before the sons were born; 
both families must have visited Jerusalem to attend the 
feasts of the Passover, and yet these strong young men 
never traveled far enough to get acquainted. Dr. Smith, 
of Bible dictionary fame, would have us believe it was 



38 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

because they lived too far apart. And yet it was so near, 
according to Luke, that a virgin with child traversed it 
twice, and maybe more times for all we know. 

It can be seen there is a sad difficulty in Holy Writ. 
This difficulty has already been written upon as a discrep- 
ancy between different books. The difficulty, it must be 
noticed, does not in this case arise from any author dis- 
agreeing with himself. When three writers say nothing of 
John's origin and rest Christ's divinity on the dove's descent 
and have John and Christ meet as though they were un- 
acquainted, there is no contradiction. The difficulty arises 
out of Luke's story, making it hard to believe the story of 
the others, and especially of St. John, who has, the Bap- 
tist say : ** I knew him not." Now the key to truth lies 
in observing how Luke, who tells of their relationship, 
gets over the baptism himself. He treats of it the least. 
He says : " But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him 
(John the Baptist) for Herodias, his brothers wife, and for 
all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above 
all, that he shut up John in prison. Now when all the 
people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being 
baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and the 
Holy Ghost descended in bodily shape like a dove upon 
him and a voice came from heaven which said : Thou art 
my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." It is notice- 
able that Luke speaks of John's imprisonment before he 
tells of the baptism. In the introduction to this gospel of 
Luke (and it is the only one that has an introduction or 
apology), it is specially stated twice that the object of 
Luke writing a gospel is to set things forth '*in order." 
We learn from the other three books, that Christ was 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 39 

baptized and then some time during the forty days follow- 
ing John was imprisoned. We know anyway that John 
must have baptized him before he was imprisoned. Luke's 
account does not necessarily contradict this fact, but the 
very gospel that is to set things forth in order, goes on to 
tell of John's incarceration ; then as an after-thought, a 
side issue, goes on to tell of Christ's baptism. It does not 
even say definitely that it was John who baptized Christ. 
It makes no reference to their not knowing each other 
either by statement or intimation as the others do. Why ? 
Because John's divine origin is already made known to the 
reader of this gospel and it makes no difference about the 
point. Why then this loose and peculiar way of telling 
it ? If Luke knew Christ was baptized before the im- 
prisonment, why does he not tell it that way ? It is because 
this is a literary subterfuge, a shuffling over the point, a 
literary after-thought. As this point makes no difference in 
this gospel it is not noticed, and at the same time it is a 
smooth evasion of what Luke knows is in the gospels of 
what he calls the "many" who had '^ taken in hand" to 
write the life of Christ. 

It is on the consideration of such points that I say the 
story of Zacharias was a made-up story resulting from this 
author's different way of going about the task of account- 
ing for Christ's divine origin. It is St. Paulism by Luke's 
hand. Therefore it sought to be a vast and complicated 
improvement on the others. Paul being a Pharisee, he 
has the whole system originate in Zacharias, a Pharisee 
priest. That is the motive and method of this way of stat- 
ing Christ's divinity. 

Why is Zacharias placed in the incense room while a 



40 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

multitude are worshipping without ? Because the next 
strongest evidence to a revelation to a multitude is to have 
a man suddenly appear before a multitude so that **they 
perceived he had seen a vision in the temple." So it was 
necessary to have Zacharias carry out some evidence. And 
thus we have the ridiculous story of Zacharias asking 
Gabriel for a sign. Telling the story in this way lends it 
an appearance of corroboration to the faithful. This stor}' 
proves itself a hippodrome, not because it is contradictor}- 
to the other writers, but because it contains such impos- 
sible contradictions of human nature within itself. We 
might believe that God sent an archangel, if he has one, 
to earth. He could do so if he wished. But no man, who 
had been asking in prayer for a son by the natural course 
of events, ever asked the greatest divine demonstration con- 
ceivable to the human mind for a sign because, forsooth, he 
was so old he did not believe Elizabeth could have a son. 
And a dumb priest to whom this vision appeared did not re- 
main placidly in the temple tending to his duties as a priest 
until '* after the days of his ministration was accom- 
plished." And then he did not go home and say nothing 
to his wife and gradually become deaf to carry out the 
climax to the stor}\ God never planned to save the souls 
of future independent Americans and casual Frenchmen 
and thinking Germans by such a piece of foolishness. And 
what is more, they are not being saved that way. 

Miracles and mendacity go together. We see this in 
miracles of motive. 

Imagine St. John sitting down with us to write a 
miracle. The subject is: "Turning water into wine." 
Christ and his mother are at a wedding in Cana. Christ's 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 41 

mother says : *' They have no wine." As it might be sup- 
posed that Christ was simply seized upon by superstitious 
people as a God and that he therefore became God by 
chance, it must be shown that, although Christ dwelt as 
an ordinary man for twenty-seven years, he was conscious 
of his divine nature and was waiting for a set time to 
appear. So Christ answers his mother: '* Woman, what 
have I to do with thee ? My time is not yet come. " This 
word '^ woman " shows his divine nature. His mother told 
the servants, however, to do as he said. So they brought 
six purification pots of two to three firkins apiece, and 
when they were filled with water to the brim, Christ said ; 
'* Draw off and bear to the governor of the feast." 

It would now be necessary to show that this wine was 
not diluted, and this could be accomplished by having the 
governor of the feast pay it as high a compliment as pos- 
sible by comparing it with other wine, and this must be 
done in a realistic way. It is necessary also that the 
governor of the feast should not know that the wine was 
miracle-made or it might be supposed he was paying the 
miracle a compliment. So the miracle would read : 
"When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that 
was made wine, and knew not whence it was, (but the serv- 
ants which drew the water knew) the governor of the feast 
called the bridegroom and saith unto him : Every man at 
the beginning doth set forth good wine ; and when men 
have well drunk, then that which is worse ; but thou hast 
kept the good wine till now." 

It would not occur to the man who was writing this 
miracle that if he started out by saying " they have no 
wine," that it would be inconsistent when wine was eventu- 



42 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

ally made and brought to the governor to have him say : 
"Thou hast kept the good wine till now," i. e. , "it is 
better than the poor wine we had at first." 

If this was founded on fact how can it be straightened 
out ? Maybe John meant when he wrote "They have no 
wine " that the supply had given out at last and they 
wanted more. This would not do, for the compliment is 
founded on the fact that people bring out their good wine 
first when the guests are sober, and serve the poor wine 
when they are not able to judge. "Thou hast kept the 
good wine till now" means to the reader that it was the 
latter part of the feast and they had been having wine. 
According to the very nature of the custom which John 
dwells upon, the compliment to Christ's wine would be 
valueless. He would not have them drink wine at the 
feast and then bring some on at the last and try to prove 
it was good by dwelling on the observation that men at 
the latter part of the feast did not know good wine. 

John meant what he said : "They have no wine." He 
started out with that idea and got so interested in his com- 
pliment that he forgot the circumstances. He simply 
wrote it, and as he had no definite conception of a real 
occurence and it was his own work, it did not appear in- 
consistent. 

As this was the time to prove, before his first miracle, 
that Christ had been waiting consciously all his life, he 
said : "My time is not yet come." If this were the case, 
it was incumbent upon him not to do a miracle. But if he 
did not it would look as though he could not. It would 
look as though he could not do miracles until people with 
faith attributed them to him. So St. John had him say his 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 43 

time was not yet come to do miracles, and immediately he 
did one. 

Let us try to believe this by every means possible. 
Maybe they had had wine. If that was the case, and it 
was gone, Christ could have put more in the same vessels. 
He would not have used the jars the family washed in. 
Maybe when Christ said " My time is not yet come," he 
meant the wine was not quite gone and he did not care to 
make more as long as there was wine. In that case Mary 
would not say, "They have no wine." That could not be. 
This wine, according to the story, was served at the end of 
the feast. John would not have Christ make wine after 
the governor had been leading the festivities and then 
call attention to the fact that such a man was no judge. 
He would have it occur at a wedding where wine was 
wanting. The start of the story, "There is no wine," 
meant there was none. 

Therefore the story is incredible. We might believe 
that God saw fit, nineteen centuries ago, to raise the dead 
if we were told a good reason for it, but when we are told 
that a man who was at a wedding, on being presented with 
wine for the first time, remarked, "Thou hast kept the 
good wine till now," reason revolts. 

God would not throw such foolish difficulties in our 
way. 

Let us swallow all the theological arguments, smooth- 
ing over the discrepancies of the different authors' ac- 
counts. Prof. Fisher remarks : "What shall be said of 
the objections to the credibility of the Gospels from 
alleged discrepancies ? The first thing to be said is that 
the objection is irrelevant." Let us believe as much of 



44 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

this as possible. Let us go farther and not call them 
'•alleged discrepancies," like an editor afraid of a suit for 
libel, but simply call them discrepancies, and assume that 
one author disagreeing with another makes no difference. 
But how are we going to believe a man who disagrees with 
himself so much in telling a plain stor}^, and disagreeing 
because of the motives that actuate a liar ? If a man sees 
an event and tells a simple, true story, that story cannot 
be inconsistent. 

Let us take a miracle of killing by the Holy Ghost. 

We learn early in Acts that those who believed in this 
new doctrine sold their possessions and '' brought the 
money and laid it at the apostles' feet." They did not 
give it into the apostles' hands. Were the apostles wor- 
shipped as gods in those days ? Were the people so 
groveling or was it the custom of giving people money by 
laying it at their feet ? This was written in the year 69 by 
Luke, who followed Paul. Paul was having this written 
for a beautiful example that can be understood by observ- 
ing his two letters to the Corinthians, which consist of 
arguments written around solicitation for money. He wrote 
I. Corinthians to tell them to begin saving. He wrote H. 
Corinthians to collect the money. Why was the money in 
Acts laid at the apostles' feet ? Because it conveys the 
idea that the people did it in spite of the apostles' dis- 
dain for money. To give money to the apostles in an 
ordinary way they would have to hold their hands. If it 
were laid at their feet they could not help it. Of course 
they would not let it lie. But it intimates beautifully that 
the apostles would not hold their hands. 

Immediately afterward we read in Chap. V. of Ananias 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 45 

who sold his land and kept back part of the money, "^his 
wife, Sapphira, also being privy to it." Ananias and 
Sapphira did not say they had given all, as is seen by 
Peter's remark: "Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine 
heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the 
price of thy land ? " Peter evidently read his heart by the 
Holy Ghost. How could poor Ananias inform the bafRed 
Holy Ghost what Satan's ideas were ? 

"While it remained was it not thine own ? And after 
it was sold was it not in thine own power ? Why hast 
thou conceived this thing in thy heart ? Thou hast not 
lied unto men but unto God." 

Probably Satan reasoned the same as the Holy Ghost 
did, and thought that after it was sold it was in Ananias' 
own power. So he was privileged to give what he wanted. 
Of course no man imagines he can lie to God successful^. 
Some might imagine they could lie to an apostle. This 
story is a beautiful warning not to think a lie to an apostle. 

"Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave up 
the ghost ; and great fear came on all that heard these 
things." It might seem that Ananias fell overcome with 
the enormity of his own crime, and Peter did not cause 
him to die. Peter, in this case, might be sorr}^ As 
Ananias had been struck dead by the Holy Ghost for 
thinking and acting a lie, it can be seen that Sapphira, 
who knew that Ananias did not give all, was doomed to 
^he same fate. 

"And the young men arose, wound him up and carried 
him out and buried him. And it was the space of about 
three hours after when his wife, not knowing what was done, 
came in." It would be natural for the Holy Ghost to 



46 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Strike her dead immediately. The Holy Ghost knew her 
mind. The Holy Ghost, it seems however, has to deal in 
technicalities and take evidence to justify the verdict. So 
Peter, who seems to be prosecuting attorney, not only asks 
her a question, but furnishes her the cue for Ijang, for it 
says : "And Peter answered unto her : Tell me whether 
ye sold the land for so much. And she said : Yea, for so 
much. Then Peter said unto her : How is it that ye have 
agreed to tempt the Spirit of the Lord ? Behold, the feet 
of them which buried thy husband are at the door and 
shall carry thee out." This makes it evident that the sum- 
mary justice of the Holy Ghost was deliberate. ''Then 
fell she down straightway at his feet and yielded up the 
ghost ; and the young men came in and found her dead, 
and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband. And 
great fear came upon the church and as many as heard 
these things." This last sentence is evidently the moral. 

It is hard to believe, though, that they could take a 
man and comply with the Jewish formalities and wrap him 
properly and get ointment and spices and arrange for a 
tomb and carry him through the streets and bury him and 
get back all in "about the space of three hours after." 
Maybe they just dumped Ananias somewhere. If they 
could carry him through the streets without question and 
dead people were not missed in the metropolis of Jerusa- 
lem, what was the use of a Holy Ghost ? Why not use a 
hammer ? And to think that when Ananias had a fatal 
attack of the Holy Ghost they did not tell his wife or invite 
her to the funeral ! She came in, happily, just when the 
model young men get back. She was just in time to be car- 
ried out. It is not said that the young men wrapped Sap- 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 47 

phira for burial as they did Ananias. They just carried her 
out and buried her beside her husband. It probably did not 
take the young men so long this time. They had practice. 
It would be interesting to know what the Holy Ghost did 
with the rest of the mone}^ When Luke wrote this, A. D. 
69, he should have asked Paul about it. All these details, 
however, were subordinate to the general moral effect of 
the story on the churches. It shows how quickly a man 
could be buried after he thought a commercial lie to a 
priest. This is a miracle with a motive. The telling 
shows it to be either a case of mendacity or a case of men- 
dacity and murder. 

Let us, in this connection, consider what Paul wrote 
to the Corinthians. He said: ^'For in eating, every one 
taketh before other his own supper ; and one is hungry 
and another is drunken." If any man can explain how 
every one in a company can take his supper before the 
others he will do wonders for science and be a boon to 
boarding house keepers. It would seem to me that as 
soon as the first man succeeded in getting his supper the 
others could not very well be before him. Let us suppose 
that each man in the company vied only with his neighbor. 
When one man got his supper "before other" how could 
the "other" be before him? These are supposed to be 
infallible words: "Every one taketh his supper before 
other." What does this begin to teach us ? It is likely 
that what Paul said was not founded on absolute fact. He 
was not doing away with those meals because the etiquette 
did not suit him. He wanted an excuse to cover his real 
motive, and scared up a vague generality out of his brain. 
It is another case of a lie overleaping itself. There may 



4^ FITE PO!XTS fX FAITH. 

have Ire:, s:... e z^s 5 to it- S:. Paul, hov.ever, lioes not 

SB.'.' :-.i: ^r : . :: : .5 wife, or Pr.i.ir ?-zi r.:; family are 
glutiozcus azi : r custirr. hai :r::r: ze 5 zzrei. He 
tookr r.:: ::.s;5 c: :r.::- r.r hiz izi zxi£^-rri:ri 1: :t:i-,: = e 
he h.aa a :z'. ;::".'e. '.'^. t "■'•:.. .;:.-; ::r ".:".:s r:". :::'r .^:rr on. 

Wher. :/.e Eic.e lorces ::5r^: .7;- ..5 i^ '_ e ir. ^j ^^norant 
we lose c : 1.7. ie::ce in it. We -z:^ 3_: ::: :..r i^r. mzce. 
Luke sz. s iz his introductioii : '"It see.T.ei ^;:i to ma 
alsc, hz-vizz: :zzi re::e;: u" iersTizzi-g c: i-. :-.ii.^5 :rom 
the veiy hrs:. :z --■■:i:r: uzto :z.et ::: crier, izms: T:;;t..e::r 
Tize:z:h:- z :zz: ::zz ; :zz £ z:e5: / z : :z:e :er:ainty of these 
th-cz, -z.ere::z :::zz hiz: ze.u :-z:rzz:el Azzirf-^ :d 



iiie cf Chris: iz creer. ezi ze:z:i"'r.y. X 



K^i. v., : 



zii Tz:i.:s •• in order. "■ Therefore, Lziize :s 1 .:l:. z-zzord- 
ing :e C:z:is:izzs. 

M = y:e :zze sezzeuze is -r/rz^^.y y z:zzz:u=:ed. Mayfoe it 
should be, '* to write to thee, in order z; z: ez;:eiez: Tiieo- 
philns, tr.z: : zz r:zizz.:es: i-inow the z-::i:zzy, etc" The 
first part of the introc z::zi. however, saying that others 
haf Tzhe- iz h ?-nd to set forth in crier a declaration of 



see.iz- zz _re.-v, _± z.zz" zi-.er iz-Terr re'iz'. . r. zi zzzc: loimcr 
SenCeZLce; ziziz zi'.e zi.e zlze r zz z iziuTi z r. i'zz ^I'en it i^ut 
how do -^e kzz" - Tzis shz"S zis h:" z.^ a :az: zi^z: 
resr iz a szzi.. zreie 11 " ze _ z. ere z.zz" ze z:.zer D3rts 
of the Bible having zz.z:ii:e5 :: :ze z:zzz5: irzyzr:. Szzzze 
zrzz: rea her mav have zz azs~ er for the loss of a - :rii. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 49 

Do you believe that God has founded his creation on a 
book ? If you do, are you not afraid your eternal soul may 
founder on a comma ? 

The Pharisees were sent out to ask John the Baptist 
who he was, and John said he preceded a greater prophet. 
''The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and 
saith : Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the 
sin of the world. This is he of whom I said : After me 
cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was 
before me. And I knew him not but that he should be 
made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing 
with water. And John bare record, saying : I saw the 
Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it abode 
upon him. And I knew him not but that he that sent me 
to baptize with water, the same said unto me : Upon whom 
thou shalt see the Spirit descending like a dove, the same 
is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." 

Is this an account of the baptism of Christ ? Smith's 
dictionary, an authority, says it is. Imagine a man seeing 
Christ coming and declaring him the Lamb of God ; then 
baptizing him ; then seeing the Holy Ghost descend, and 
then declaring the evidence that the man was Christ was 
that he was not to know him until he saw the Holy 
Ghost descend ! The only way to get around this would 
be to say that Christ had been baptized previously ; that he 
came walking that way some time afterward, and that this 
is John the Baptist's account of it. That might be a good 
way to avoid the discrepancy. According to this then, 
there is no account in John of the actual baptism of Christ. 
Christians accept this as the baptism. 

Dr. Smith, in his great Bible dictionary, exclaims : 



50 FIVE POINTS IX FAITH. 

•'•'Hovr 13 John's acknowledgment of Jesus at the moment 
of his preseniing himself for baptism compatible with his 
subsequent assertion that he knew him not save b}' the 
descent of the Holy Spirit upon him. which took place 
after the baptism ? It must be borne in mind that their 
places of residence were at the two extremities of the 
countr}', with but little means of communication between 
them. It is possible, tiiereiore. :ha: they had never met 
before. It was certainly of the utmost importance that 
there should be no suspicion of concert or collusion 
between ::-".. Is rhis an explanation ? 

Dr. Sn:i:ii Starrs out to explain how John's statement 
that he knevr Christ before the baptism is compatible with 
his statement afterwards that he was not to know him until 
the dove descended. Then Dr. Smith goes on to explain 
ho^w John's statement that he was not to know him is com- 
patible with the fact that the}' lived in the same countr\- 
and vsere related, by sapng the}' lived far apart. Is that 
the point to be explained here ? 

T::e point is, why did John say he knew Christ and 
then say he v.as not to know him ? Tluat is the question. 
That is what the Reverend Dr. Smith pretends to explain. 
Does he do it ? Read the Bible experts for truth and }-ou 
will find yourself deceived and adroitly sidetracked in everj- 
instance into a iiderent question or bunted against a theo- 
logical term. T::at is what the educated ministry' is for. 
Such logic proves that the Bible is accepted only by poor 
reasoners. and that the necessity of sustaining it has 
begotten a demand for people who can give the appear- 
ance of reasons. Moreover it has not only created a de- 
mand for, but has cultivated a school of penerted thought 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 51 

that Is a detriment to every study in our orthodox colleges. 

The question here is, v^hy did John say he knew 
Christ and then say he was not to know him. Has that 
anything to do with the distance they lived apart, and the 
nature of the country ? And if it had, did not Mary, a 
virgin with child, traverse it twice ? This is an account of 
Christ's baptism or else John gives none. How he got it 
in this manner is easily understood. He was so anxious 
to emphasize Christ's divinity that he happily has John's 
Holy Ghost recognize him even while he was coming. 
Then to rest it all surely on divinity and prove there was 
no collusion, he says John the Baptist was not to know him 
except by the descent of the dove. St. John wrote this in 
the same way he wrote the wine and water miracle. He 
did not see the inconsistency. When a man's mind is filled 
with the Holy Ghost there is no room left for common 
sense. 

There might be a way to explain this if the other 
accounts did not say that the dove descended after Christ 
was baptized. John does not say this definitely. The 
Baptist saw him coming and recognized him. Maybe he 
saw the dove coming along with him. The God-gram- 
marians do not choose to believe this, however. The 
whole story then is a lie. The proof of it is that those who 
perpetuate the doctrine try to avoid the facts and give 
logic that is an injury to the God-made mind of man. 

Sometimes they differ. Speaking of Mary's visit. Dr. 
Smith says: "Three months after this and while Mary 
still remained with her, Elizabeth was delivered of a son." 
Tallmadge and Buell, in their "Beautiful Story," say: 
*' For reasons which the Bible does not give us to know, 



52 FIVE ? 



o-.-* - :: i-n 



Mar}' returned to Nazareth before the birth of Elizabeth's 
child, though the event must have been expected near the 
time of her departure. " Neither of these statements is pre- 
faced with an ••' if " or a '•' probably." Both are told as facts 
for the faithful. They do not depend on an}-thing but the 
observation of a short story in the English Bible. Has 
not assumption had as much to do with the making of the 
religion as :: .as with explaining it ? Can a man find 
truth in the Bible and believe without doing his mind an 
injury ? 

How can a young man or woman vsrith a mind trained 
in the "higher education/' pick up this Bible and not be 
confronted with an eyesore ? Hc:^.' can he. if he has been 
trained as a close reasoner, a lover :: the truth, pick up 
the God-grammarians and allow his intellect to be insulted? 
If this must be, let us cultivate the dark ages and live in 
ignorance and bliss and holy battle. 

Miracles were never done. Why do we know ? Be- 
cause they were the basis cf a system of religion that per- 
petuates educated deceit. It must have been founded in 
the same spirit. 



III. 



HOW THE TRINITY IS ONE. 



The Trinity is miscalled a mystery. The authority 
upon which the Trinity rests was forged in the fifteenth 
century. It consists of the words : '' For there are three 
that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the 
Holy Ghost, and these three are one." (I. John 5:7). Of 
the 150 manuscripts from which the epistle of John was 
translated, only four have this sentence. They are, the 
Codex Guelpherbytanus, of the seventeenth century, the 
Codex Ravianus, subsequent to the 3^ear 15 14, the Codex 
Britannicus or Monfortii, of the fifteenth or sixteenth 
century, and the Codex Ottobonianus, of the fifteenth 
century. The words : "He that acknowledgeth the Son 
hath the Father also," (I. John 2:23) were only found in 
these books, being forged at the same time. In all New 
Testaments these last words are printed in italics to show 
the unreliability. The so-called Trinity verse, however, is 
not treated so openly but is put in the text of inspired 
truth. 

The reason of this is, the italic verse is not needed to 
bolster up a doctrine and honesty is in that case allowable. 



54 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

The other verse, however, is the only definite support of 
the Trinity and it has been accepted by means of the Holy 
Ghost. Inspiration was thus at work on the Bible at a 
late day. 

For pulpit and creed purposes, the Word has become 
the Son and the Trinit}'' is said to be "the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost." If this passage of the Bible was ac- 
cepted as it was written in the fifteenth century and put 
into the Bible as Holy Writ, what right have the creed- 
makers to teach the Trinity under different wording ? Un- 
less they can prove that the *^Word" as John intends it, 
and the "Son" are the same, the preachers are guilty of 
perversion. A close study of the Bible shows this to be 
the case. The Bible says : "The Father, the Word and 
the Holy Ghost are "one." The preachers tell us, "'the 
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are one." Will we 
believe the preachers or do some thinking ourselves ? 

It is a peculiarity of John that he frequentty speaks 
of the W^ord in his epistles. No other writer makes 
use of this expression. John also speaks frequently of the 
Son in the same letters. He uses sometimes one term and 
sometimes another, and there is no indication that he 
attached the same signification to the words. Why should 
he use the two words with one meaning ? That he did not 
intend this is not only reasonable to suppose, but this view 
is attested plainly by observing the method of the man who 
wrote the Trinit}^ verse in the fifteenth century. 

This monk or amanuensis who interpolated a verse 
and used the expression, "Word," might be thought to be 
actuated merely by a desire to imitate John's style or 
peculiar expression for "Son." 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 55 

However, the same amanuensis also forged at the 
same time the verse : *'He that acknowledgeth the Son 
hath the Father also." He also made a distinction. Why 
should he use " Word " in one verse and '' Son " in another 
if it was not the result of thought, of observing a differ- 
ence ? There must be some reason or else the Bible is a 
random, slipshod affair, and everything is figure of speech 
rather than fact. In that case it is not authority. The 
monk who interpolated these verses to the Holy Bible 
deliberated. He thought. We must look for the thought 
in his work. We will study, as he probably did, what John 
meant by ''the Word." 

We first come across the ''Word" in the New Testa- 
ment, in the introduction of John's Gospel. Putting out 
of mind the assumption that the "Word" means the 
"Son," a fair reading of this introduction shows what John 
meant by his expression. 

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was 
with God and the Word was God. The same was in the 
beginning with God. All things were made by him and 
without him was not anything made that was made. In 
him was life and the life was the light of men. And the 
light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth 
it not." What does this mean ? Did the man who wrote 
it simply do so to say that two things are one with the mere 
object of constructing a difficulty. Not if he was sane. 
John's object was to show that this doctrine of Christi- 
anity, which is frequently spoken of as the Truth, was not 
an upstart theory or institution. Truth is eternal. The 
Word was to his mind the Truth — the new doctrine of 
Christianity. So he says: "In the beginning was the 



5t) FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Word (Truth of Christianity) and the Word was with God 
and the Word (Truth) was God." Wh}^ then, Christians 
might ask, did not John use the word Truth ? For the 
simple reason that any one who acknowledges a God knows 
he is Truth, and Truth is with him and Truth is eternal and 
unchangeable. Every one, however, does not recognize 
Christianity as Truth. So the *' Word " was John's expres- 
sion for what he considered the real Truth, Christianity. 
If he simply said Truth he would have said something that a 
Jevv' would admit, but his idea of Truth would be different. 
The ''Word" was a necessary distinction to John. **In 
him was life and the life was the light of men." That is, 
spiritual life. Christian doctrine or Truth, which in John's 
theory made life worth living. ''And the light shineth in 
darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not " — i. e., 
the Jews did not perceive it. 'They did not understand 
their prophecies. The Truth existed but men's minds were 
too dark to see it. 

This whole introduction is merely a statement that 
Christianity is the Truth of God and that Truth is eternal. 
It is an attempt to put this fact in such a way as to show 
that Christianity is not a theory. 

A theologian, therefore, might imagine that Christ 
himself is the truth of God's doctrine, and, therefore, the 
Word and Christ or the Son are the same. But John con- 
tinues : "There was a man sent from God (John the 
Baptist) whose name was John. The same came for a 
witness to bear witness to the light that all men through 
him might believe." We here discover that the "light" 
was Christ, or rather his teachings. Christ was only a 
"light" by teaching the truth. He would not have been 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 57 

much of a light otherwise. The light was his ♦'teaching," 
and it is the lack of a distinction here by which modern 
man-idolaters get all their mystery out of the Trinity. 

If Christ was the Word and the Word was God and 
life was in God, and out of this life came light and this 
light was Christ, then Christ was merely the whole thing ; 
Christ was in himself by several removes and came out of 
himself by a long process. We do not know what it all 
means, except that either John or the theologians must 
have been crazy. Above all, it does not teach us a fact or 
give an idea. That is theology. This explanation has 
less beauty than the merest infidel could give it un- 
hampered by orthodoxy. The theologians who say Christ 
is the Word do not have as beautiful a conception of their 
doctrine as was possessed by a forging monk of the fifteenth 
century. 

Here is the proof : 

This monk or Catholic thinker must have read John's 
gospel and studied it before he copied John's epistle. It 
had been canonized a thousand years, and he knew it. 
With the exception of the abstract and unfounded theory 
of the Trinity, existing at that time, this introduction to 
John's gospel was apparently the most abstruse passage in 
the Bible. So this Catholic thinker, in copying the scrip- 
ture, got to the first epistle of John, and coming to the 
seventh verse, he read : ''And it is the Spirit that beareth 
witness, because the Spirit is Truth." He discovers that 
John speaks of the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Holy 
Ghost, the Comforter, the Word, the Truth ; not to speak 
of God, or John's reference to '' the fathers " or apostles 
that bear witness to the *' little children " of the church. 



58 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

It would appear to this Catholic thinker that John was 
rather figurative, would it not ? Casual Bible readers 
might become confused. It is easily conceived that the 
Spirit and the Comforter are only other names for the 
Holy Ghost. And John says: "The Spirit is Truth." So 
much is straightened out. But this is no explanation of 
John's "Word." John's use of this w^ord in his Gospel 
makes it an enigma, in appearance. So when John got to 
the point of telling what bore witness of the whole religion 
— "And it is the Spirit (Holy Ghost) that beareth witness 
because the Spirit Is Truth " — it was an important place to 
straighten out and make sure of a definite understanding. 
So this Catholic thinker went to work to weed out a few 
figures of speech. He looked up John's "Word" In his 
gospel. He there noticed something significant. John did 
not speak of "the Father" In that passage. It was simply 
God. " The Father " was not In the beginning. Simply 
the Truth (the Word) was In the beginning. So this 
Catholic thinker set his brains to work for the benefit of 
humanity and wrote, "The Father, the Word and the 
Holy Ghost, these three are one." 

And for this reason : It was the one great difference 
between Christianity and Judaism that Christianity taught 
God as "the Father." In Jewish religion such a concep- 
tion had not been held. God to them was "the God of 
our fathers." They were so far removed that he was not 
even God definitely to the common people. And even to 
their fathers, the prophets who had the Holy Ghost, he 
was not "the Father," but simply God. This one differ- 
ence is what Christianity was founded on. As far as real 
morality is concerned, it was and always will be the same 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 59 

among Jew and Gentile. No one can change moral law or 
make it better than that of the ten commandments. All 
we can contrive is a way to get people to be moral, up- 
right, humane, loving. That was the scheme of Christi- 
anity. The method was to teach a personal, fatherly (and 
therefore loving) relationship between every man and God. 
By this means it was supposed that men would be better ; 
become so moral, in fact, that the commandments would 
be naturally fulfilled in their dispositions without being 
held up as law. Whether or not the method of teaching 
this idea is a fallacy this was the whole idea. It had not 
been taught before. 

Therefore ''Our Father" is the very sign-word and 
gist of Christianity, the new doctrine. It is the doctrine 
itself. It was what it taught. Is it not ? According to 
John, it is the Truth, the Word ; the eternally true doctrine 
that existed even though men did not know it. What was 
the working of this new religion ? It was the establish- 
ment in the heart of a new feeling ; a feeling that could 
never have existed until God became ''the Father." This 
was the Holy Ghost. The spirit that filled the minds of 
the old prophets was the spirit of prophecy. It was the 
Hebrew Holy Ghost. Now every man was to have a 
direct relation with God by the relation of love. In the 
time of Paul, the Hebrew idea of the Holy Ghost was still 
clung to with the fraud of miracles and a little futile senti- 
mentality thrown in. At present, however, the Hoty Ghost 
is merely a feeling of conversion. That is what it was 
getting to be in the fifteenth century. It was the third 
development of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, when the idea 
of «*the Father" dwells in the mind it is the religion of 



60 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Truth, the Word that ever existed ; and this having of 
'^the Father" in the mind is what constitutes the Holy 
Ghost. ''The Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, these 
three are one." It is like saying, clothes, raiment and 
apparel are the same. 

I could explain this at greater length or state it in a 
different way. It can be conceived more definitely by 
reading this chapter twice. If I should say, "The Father," 
the *' Word " and the "Holy Ghost " are the same, (as ex- 
pressions) it is evident, because to anyone who understands 
Christianity they are the same. W^hat is the Word ; the 
truth of this religion? It is the idea of " Our Father. " 
What is this called ? It is called the Holy Ghost. They 
are expressions for the same idea. To our minds, placing 
the expressions in quotation, as I have, makes the mystery 
simple. At the time this verse was forged, quotation- 
marks were not in use. There is not a quotation-mark in 
the Bible. It was the feeling of a necessity for conveying 
such distinctions as I have made that led to the adoption 
of quotation marks in "profane" literature. It makes all 
the difference in the Avorld. How could this monk convey 
definitely his idea in a day when quotation was not used ? 
This is why I say God never founded his human world on 
a book. A development in literary style could, at one shift, 
change the whole theology, to future minds. I believe that 
if quotation marks had been in vogue in this interpolator's 
time he would have used them. I do not believe the Bible, 
but I hope so for the sake of Christians who still cling to 
it. It would be a long step toward a rational, and there- 
fore beautiful religion. I do not believe the Bible, but I 
believe it is an infidel's duty, when he can discover a more 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 61 

beautiful meaning in the Bible, and prove it circumstanti- 
ally, to do so for the benefit of his fellow men who are 
surely arriving at the stage when honesty with self will be 
the highest virtue — but who have not got there yet. It is 
a step toward the time when foolish mystery will give way 
to truth and beauty. It makes Christ a good man rather 
than a bungling God. 

Why did not the interpolater say : '^ God, the Word 
and the Holy Ghost are one ? " Because the Holy Ghost 
is not a thinking of "God." God existed in the mind 
before Christ came. "The Father" did not exist in the 
mind then. Why did he not write : " The Father, the Soft 
and the Holy Ghost are one" ? Simply because Christ 
came to teach the idea, the Word, that God is a personal 
father of all. He did not become the son of God merely 
in order that after he was the Son, he could tell us he was 
the Son. The teaching was, "be ye sons of God." He 
was the first of the fatherly conception. If we say the 
Father and the Son "are one," and claim that thinking 
Christ to be the Son is the same as thinking God is the 
Father, there is no Holy Ghost then, because Christ is 
merely the son of God and God the father of Christ. It 
is merely a freak of Divinity ; and where does humanity, the 
"feeling," the Holy Ghost go ? 

Or take this theological curio as the theologians mean 
it. "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost" are one, 
because Christ is the Father and the Father is the Son. 
The Father is the God of the Son and the Son is the God 
of humanity, and they are both one God, and therefore 
God is our Father. Christ is not only the Son of God but 
he must be the God of the Father, being equal, and it is a 



62 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

question where the Holy Ghost comes in. If the Holy- 
Ghost is a feeling in the human heart, the only feeling in 
this case is a comic one. No wonder the theologians have 
it so twisted they think it a mystery. 

This reasoner of the fifteenth century, who took a 
copy of the Bible and added to it to suit himself, w^as 
simply inserting an explanation to get rid of some figures 
of speech. He studied the matter. If this is not the case, 
and it was merely a new doctrine, why might it not have 
been put into Christ's mouth, or somewhere else in the 
Bible ? The passage was put into the book that has more 
figures of speech for divinity than any other in the Bible. 

It must have been put there to explain them. 

The theologians seized upon it as a substantiation for 
their logical moonshine. Whether or not this thinker of the 
fifteenth century had the idea explained, the evidence is all 
in favor of the belief that he was trying to clear up a diffi- 
culty. Viewed in a rational light it certainly is a clearing 
up and it seems to have been done studiously. The writer 
did it by taking the matter from a human standpoint and 
stud3dng John. If John said that God was in the begin- 
ning and the Word was with God, and this Word was 
God, why did not the man who wrote the verse in John 
also use the word God, instead of '^ Father ? " He did it 
for the same reason that John, in writing about the begin- 
ning, did not use the word ** Father." The *'Word" that 
was with God in the beginning, was the Truth that he was 
"the Father," but as far as human religion was concerned, 
he was not **the Father," he was simply God. When this 
truth had come to pass, the man who wrote **the Father" 
in the Trinity verse did not use John's word, "God," 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 63 

because John was writing about the beginning, and he was 
writing from a present human standpoint. That is the 
only standpoint from which man can study God. That is 
why the interpolator got sense into his verse. It is the 
absence of this knowlenge, and the inability to see Christ 
simply as a teacher, that some are unable to get as much 
beauty and truth out of their "inspired" dogma as an 
infidel can get out of history. They do not know exactly 
what the theory of Christianity is. Offer them a plain fact 
in the Bible and their Semitic deism will become so 
tangled with superstition that the result is a muddle and a 
mystery. Then they "canonize" it. 

Creed has not only taken a forgery, printed it in the 
Bible as truth, and kept it from the minds of believers, but 
they have misunderstood it and perverted it. It is now not 
only '^ the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," but '' God 
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost." The 
honest contemplation of this would wTeck the mind of a 
Dante. What it will be next is hard to imagine. This is 
the result of trying to make Christ God instead of a teacher 
of God — a method of God working by natural means. 

It is hoped that the explanation of this Trinity verse 
from an infidel point of view may give a new idea to Christ- 
ians who have had difficulty with the Trinity. How much 
more beautiful the idea of God becomes when we under- 
stand the method by which ''the Father, the Word and 
the Holy Ghost" are the sign words for the new idea of 
God. John, of course, believed that Christ was the Son 
and is alwa3^s with God. We see it in his writings He 
says: '-And if we sin we have an advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ." There is not a word in the Bible, 



64 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

however, to back the Trinit3^-makers in the statement that 
Christ and the Holy Ghost are God. If Christ is God, then 
he was God, and if this was the case why did he not say 
so ? Why was he the Son of God ? Where does the Bible 
speak or hint at a '' God the Father, God the Son, and God 
the Holy Ghost," or state that three separate beings are 
one ? Is there anything to excuse the creed-makers' lie ? 

There is only one manner in which this theological 
Trinity can be one. There is only one manner in nature 
in which three can be one. The Trinity is one by this 
method, and it is a fit reflection on a theological God. I 
will explain this method. The Christ or so-called God of 
this new sect of the year 30 was a Jew among Jews. Being 
human, his divinity had to be founded on the God of 
the Jews. Being human, in order to be divine he had to 
come from that God. The God of the Jews was an ab- 
stract, unknown Deity, of which there was no definite con- 
ception as an object of worship. As far as any idea of him 
vvas concerned, the Jews worshipped a nothing that Moses 
had given them. That was why they built an ark and a 
Holy of holies. Being idolaters, which the}^ were at the 
time of Christ, and having a God who was nothing, they 
had to build a box with two gilt angels on it to carry 
nothing around on, so that they would know where it was. 
The theologians ^^God" in the Trinity is that same God. 
Then Christ, who is called God, came in human form. He 
furnished a conception, and this was an improvement. 
Christians are now supposed to worship Christ, the God as 
he is. As a matter of fact, as far as any conception of him 
is concerned they can only address him as he is pictured 
as a man. They say Christ was with God before he came. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 65 

He must have been a spirit then because he had to be born 
to be a man. That man is now dead. The holy St. Paul 
says that spiritual flesh is different from bodily. He cer- 
tainly does not exist in the flesh now. Can anyone then 
conceive of Christ as he now is ; as he was before he came, 
the God to whom he prays ? Christians cannot worship 
Christ as a conception unless they worship back 1867 years. 
Therefore if they worship Christ as the present God, he is 
the same inconceivable now as the God of the Jews — 
nothing. The Holy Ghost is a feeling. Did any one ever 
pra)^ to his Hol}^ Ghost ? As far as being a definite God 
is concerned, it is nothing. Three nothings are nothing, 
one and equal. 



IV. 

HOW ''FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY" 
ORIGINATED. 



In the last verse of I. Cor. 12 St. Paul said " But covet 
earnestly the best gifts ; and yet shew I unto you a more 
excellent way. " He has already told them the merits of 
striving to be a prophet, but he refers to something more 
honorable still. Commencing with the 13th Chapter we 
discover that this honorable trait is charit}/. This very 
word, thanks to modern benevolence and practical ways of 
showing the care of man for man, has become invested 
with all that is purest and noblest in the human heart. It 
is not mere words, sentiment and smiles, but self denial for 
a brother'^ benefit. That is what it is now. 

It is not what St. Paul meant. 

After saying that all the "gifts" were of no avail 
without charity he explains in verse 3 ; "And though I 
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give 
my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me 
nothing." Giving to the poor was not charity with St. 
Paul. In fact it is likely that if they had offered goods to 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 67 

feed the poor, St. Paul would have objected. The mem- 
bers of his church lived in practical socialism, giving all 
their spare earnings to the common church fund. When 
St. Peter was said to have struck Ananias and Sapphira 
dead by the Holy Ghost for keeping back part of the pay- 
ment for the property they sold, it was the beginning of 
this system, and an awful warning to the church. That is, 
the story, at least, was an awful warning. St. Paul did the 
collecting and tended to the poor. They were **the poor 
saints at Jerusalem " that he frequently spoke of. 

What does he mean by charity ? " Charity suffereth 
long and is kind ; charity envieth not ; charity vaunteth 
not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, 
seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no 
evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, 
beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things." 

Charity, it seems, embraces all the virtues under heaven, 
except that of giving something away. Charity, to him, 
was a lot of people who got along well and did not disrupt 
his organization ; that did not behave itself unseemly to 
get Paul into trouble with the higher powers. This was a 
virtue he always insisted upon. Charity thinketh no evil 
of St. Paul's motives ; rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoic- 
eth in the truth of what St. Paul tells them, and, in fact, 
*' beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things " that St. Paul said, or did, or saddled 
on them. It was only necessary to remain in a state of 
placid ignorance, and not have a desire to possess what 
was your own. Charity was an inclusive virtue, embracing 



68 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

everything desirable in a community where a priest did the 
advising and collecting. 

Charity ''believeth all things" — this is all that was 
necessary to say. 

Can St. Paul's charity be palliated and put in a more 
beautiful light ? Maybe St. Paul believed in giving, but 
insisted upon giving with the heart ; maybe he dwelt on 
the aesthetic side. This is the only argument that could 
be offered. 

It is unnecessary to explain that a man who gives his 
money to the poor sends his heart with it. If this were 
not the case, he would not be giving, but robbing himself. 
It is the recognition of this fact that has given the word 
''charit^^" its meaning. St. Paul makes a distinction 
between charity and giving. His being "kind" was 
merely a wallowing in sentiment. It was the glamour of 
all the wordy viriue with which he surrounded himself. 
That his -'charit}'" had no basis to it except that of self, 
is proven in his ideas of caring for widows and children. 
In his letter to Timothy, a young bishop whom he ordained 
and put in charge of one of his churches after he had them 
well started, Paul gives rules for appointing elders, and 
among other things, regulating the membership of widows 
in the church. In I. Timothy, Chap. II., he says : '• Honor 
widows who are widows indeed. But if any widow have 
children or nephews let them learn first to shew piety at 
home and to requite their parents, for that is good and 
and acceptable before God. But she that is a widow- 
indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God and continueth in 
supplications and prayers night and day. But she that 
liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. And these 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 69 

things give in charge that they may be blameless. But if 
any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his 
own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than 
infidel." 

A *' widow indeed" was a widow without children. 
This provision that no widows with children could join 
church is the most obscurely and discreetly put of any verse 
in Paul. Imagine a man explaining that a widow with 
children could not join church by saying **let them learn 
first to show piety at home and to requite their parents." 
A person would think he was talking about the children 
and nephews wishing to join the church and show piety. 
He does not mean, of course, that ''any widow "should 
stay at home and requite ''their parents." What St. Paul 
is complexly driving at is, that any widow with children 
or nephews cannot join church, and, moreover, if any 
children or nephews in the church have a widowed mother 
or aunt, they must support her outside of the church. She 
cannot get the benefit of the community of goods by 
joining. 

In this light let us read this puzzle again and see how 
it straightens out. "If any widow have children or 
nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home and to 
requite their parents, for that is good and acceptable 
before God." That is, if any children or nephews have a 
widow whom they can't support, and she wishes to become 
a member and be aided by the church, let the children and 
nephews get out of church and take care of her themselves. 
That is the meaning ; and it is shown further by the state- 
ment that any member who cannot take care of his own 



10 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

widows is worse than an infidel. It is well that an infidel 
is not as bad off in faith as an unfortunate orphan. 

What, then, is a widow indeed ? She is a widow with- 
out young children. A widow with children or poor children 
with a widow are excluded. It would seem, then, that all 
childless widows or widowless children could join. No. For 
verse 9 says : ** Let not a widow be taken into the number 
under three score (60) years old, having been the wife of 
one man." This would seem a humane provision, but 
there is a limitation to it, for the next verse says she must 
be ** Well reported of for good works ; if she have brought 
up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have 
washed the saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if 
she have diligently followed every good work." 

In short, no widow can join church until she is 60 years 
of age, and not then, unless her children are raised. She 
must have a reputation for entertaining strangers, for this 
would argue that she had a house in order to be able to do 
it. She must have a reputation for washing the saints' feet, 
for it would then furnish a good place for the ^'saints" to 
put up and be waited on and not be bothered with babies. 
She must be sixty years of age and have had only one hus- 
band, for this would mean that her children were grown, 
and being so pious and aged, she would soon die and leave 
it all to the church, as she would have no dependent 
babies to require her legacy. This is the only widow who 
could get ^'charity" out of the church. 

Why did not Paul state it in the first place, without 
making such a quibble about nephews and children and 
their *' piety," which, in the end, has nothing to do with 
it ? What was troubling Paul was the children in church 



P^IVE POINTS IN FAITH. 1i 

who might become unable to support their mothers, and 
how Paul could immediately get rid of the whole lot. 
Study the fourth verse, fifth chapter of I. Timothy, and 
see a hypocritically twisted sentence that is a prototype of 
Paul's fourteen books. 

That is why he warns Timothy, in the seventh verse : 
*' And these things give in charge, that they (the doctrines) 
may be blameless. " This is instructing him to put these 
damnable principles in such a disguised doctrinal way that 
the motive will not appear. That is why he tells Timothy 
that the reason a widow indeed can be received is because 
she prays more. And a widow whose children or nephews 
cannot support her, lives in ''the pleasures" of children 
and is "dead while she liveth, " so she cannot be taken in, 
and the children must get out for they have a new field for 
piety. She is divinely damned. These were the ''blame- 
less " reasons to be given to the church by Timothy. It is 
certainly a boon to be an infidel to such a book and be able 
to tell the truth. 

Verse i6. — "If any man or woman that believeth 
have widows let them relieve them and let not the 
church be charged ; that it may relieve them that are 
widows indeed." Why would a "widow indeed," who had 
a reputation for entertaining strangers, need relief ? This 
was the result of Paul's solicitude for the yearly dividends. 
This was what made the church wealthy. It was education 
taking advantage of superstition and ignorance, impelled 
by the lowest motives of which the human heart is capable 
that built the holy altar and the restful wine cellar. 

St. Paul says, in verse 14 : "I will therefore that the 
younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, 



72 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully, 
for some are already turned aside after Satan." For a long 
time St. Paul taught them to live in community and not 
marry. So many of them turned aside after Satan, and 
there w^as so much for the adversary to notice that he gave 
women the priestly privilege of bearing children. 

Perhaps he thought he might as well. 

Modern ecclesiasts say that the church is not to be 
judged because in the course of the middle ages it *' be- 
came corrupt." If this stuff was written in the year 57 the 
religion was rotten when it started. They now claim this 
is inspired. 

This is the ''charity" which pollutes Paul's mind in 
I. Cor. 13. And he ends up : "And now abideth, faith, 
hope and charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is 
charity." St. Paul usually preached ''faith" as the one 
great end. To the Corinthians this was not necessary. 
They had faith in plenty, but the trouble was to get them 
to agree and be decent. Ignorance and "faith" go 
together. 



In the light of this can we believe the Corinthians 
were quite so depraved in their eating as Paul would like 
to have made them believe he had heard ? Was it not his 
real motive to do away with the drawing on the church 
funds to feed the people ? Why were they so voracious ? 
Must they not have been hungry ? We learn in the early 
part of Acts that the Greeks complained because their 
widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Paul or 
Luke only told the incident to found a new system of 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 73 

service. We do not know whether it was the truth or not. 
It would, of course, be a good argument against the 
system upon which Christianity was founded ; but I do not 
believe anything Paul says, whether the evidence is for 
or against the church. There may have been truth in 
it. All we can believe is that these epistles were written. 
There would be little object in forging them in entirety. 
I believe them genuine. They are lies. They were lies 
to the church and are a warning to us. 

Maybe these Corinthians were hungry. They were 
told to give all they could to the church. Their bles- 
sedness rested upon it. Their voraciousness must have 
been hunger. And Paul's argument that the etiquette, the 
depravity, did not suit him, is only one of his arguments by 
which he makes his real motives so ''blameless." 



V. 



WHO WROTE REVELATION ? 



Who wrote Revelation ? is one of the stock mysteries 
of the church. Who St. John the Divine was is a mystery 
unfathomed. 

Some choose to believe this St. John the Divine was 
St. John the Apostle. Some have claimed it was a second 
John who ministered in Proconsular Asia. Luther did not 
believe it was St. John the Apostle. Those who contend 
it was John the Apostle quote " tradition " for their author- 
ity. Dionysius of Alexandria, who lived A. D. 240, and 
who is said to have been the ablest bishop of his time, 
testified that the writers before him repudiated Revelation 
as a forgery of Cerinthus (whoever he was). The book 
was written by some one who had received the Revelation 
on the Isle of Patmos. Some say it was written on the 
Isle of Patmos. Others say the writer was at Ephesus, 
where Paul's doctrines had been founded, and that he 
merely refers to having been on the Isle of Patmos when 
he received the revelation. This idea is based on the ninth 
vepe of Chap. I, where the writer says he "was in the 
Isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 15 

testimony of Jesus Christ. " If it had been written then, 
the writer would most likely have said, "am in the Isle 
which is called Patmos," etc. He would not have written 
in the past tense. 

Dionysius, the learned Christian bishop, also said, A. 
D. 240, that it was not known in his day that St. John the 
Apostle had ever been in the Isle of Patmos. It was on 
this testimony that Luther based his opinions. Taking all 
this from Christian books, it can be seen that the church 
does not know who wrote Revelation. St. John the Divine 
is merely a name for a mystery. Most Christians choose 
to believe it was St. John the Apostle. They believe it 
because they do not know. The preachers believe it 
simply because they believe it. They tell the congregation 
St. John the Apostle wrote it. None of them seem to 
study the question much. They merely assume the belief. 

Those who believe it found their faith on *^ tradition. " 
What is tradition ? 

Tradition tells us that St. James the Less, in the 
ninety-sixth year of his age, was thrown from a pinnacle 
of a temple by the Jews, and landing in the court below, 
''but not being killed on the spot," he arose and offered a 
beautiful prayer to heaven for his persecutors. ''But 
malice is too diabolical to be satisfied with kindness," says 
tradition, so they poured a shower of stones upon him 
while he kept offering his prayer to heaven, " and implor- 
ing forgiveness at the throne of grace." Not killing the 
aged St. James the Less in this manner, they at last extir- 
pated him with a fuller's club. As tradition does not say 
that he arose from his knees, we must conclude that he 
was at last "killed on the spot." 



76 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Tradition tells us that the Romans got up a special 
kind of cross to crucify Andrew. Incidentally they furn- 
ished an extra emblem for the church. 

Tradition tells us that St. James the Great was tried 
and condemned to be beheaded. It is said that the officer 
■who had charge of him was converted at the last moment, 
so another officer was found, and St. James and the first 
officer were beheaded together. The first officer was prob- 
ably tried ••'on the spot."' 

Tradition tells us it does not know how St. Matthew 
was killed but opines he was slain with a halbert. 

Tradition tells us that St. Thomas first received a 
shower of darts and was then killed with a spear. 

Tradition tells us that St. Mark founded a very suc- 
cessful church in Alexandria, Egypt, •'* where he preached 
with the greatest freedom."" For some reason the Egypt- 
ians suddenly changed their minds, and taking him from 
church during the day, they dragged him over the most 
rocky places until night, and left him on a precipice near 
the sea. That night Christ appeared and comforted him 
so that he kept alive. The next morning the Egyptians 
returned and dragged him again and then burned him. 
Tradition tells, also, that his •'•' remains "' Avere later re- 
moved to Venice, and he is, therefore, the tuletary saint of 
the city. 

Tradition tells us that St. Ignatius was eaten up by 
lions in the amphitheater. -'A few bones only were left 
which were collected by his deacons and carried back to 
Antioch." 

Tradition tells us that the Romans tried to bum 
Polycarp, but that the wind blew the flames aside and they 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. il 

had to kill him with a spear. Afterward the centurion 
burned the body, and ^'the few bones remaining, more 
precious than gold and jewels to his affectionate church, 
Avere gathered and buried." 

Tradition tells us that Peter was fleeing from Rome to 
escape Nero, and was met at the city gate by Christ (thirty- 
four years after the crucifixion). Peter, it seems, did not 
ask Christ where he came from, but "whither he was 
going," and Christ said: **To Rome, to be crucified the 
second time." This is given in tradition as divine sarcasm, 
for Peter was so humiliated that he went back to Rome, 
and when brought to the cross, insisted on being crucified 
upside down. This is all taken from Fleetwood, a Scotch- 
man, who wrote the life of Christ, and says he avoided all 
'^ apocryphal " tradition. There are volumes of " tradition" 
in existence. 

Tradition had a fertile ingenuity in ways of killing 
people and laying it all on the Romans. Tradition knew 
that a church with a belief founded on the blood of mar- 
tyrs would beget a bloody mind to uphold the church ; it 
furnished the food for fanaticism by merely writing in a 
book. Tradition had nearly all the martyrs live to the age 
of ninety odd years and made them all tough so that they 
could furnish more horror for tradition. 

Tradition even knows the last addresses they made. 
Here is St. Andrew's address to his cross : "I have long 
desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been 
consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it and 
adorned with his members as so many inestimable jewels. 
I therefore come joyfully and triumphing to it, that it may 
receive me as a disciple and follower of him and be the 



78 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

means of carrying me safe to my Master, being the instru- 
ment on which he redeemed me." 

Tradition has written scintillating and jeweled com- 
pound sentences for the saints that sound as though they 
were all composed by the same student of Latin stems. 

Tradition has furnished an appearance of ''our Lady " 
at any spot where it was desired to found an institution or 
consecrate a medicinal spring. 

Tradition has furnished enough holy bones to make a 
trinity of every saint. But tradition is going out of style. 
People who study something of the methods of killing used 
by the Romans and their warlike motives know that tra- 
dition and its martyrdoms long drawn out is only a product 
of the same ghoulish cowardice that constructed the rack 
and the flesh pincers for heretics in the middle ages, and 
founded Spanish institutes of conversion that looked like 
the patent offices of hell. 

Tradition has furnished the church with the skulls of 
the three wise men of the East and put them in a shrine at 
Cologne. No doubt they are the skulls according to faith. 
If faith can move mountains, all that would be necessary 
would be to procure three skulls and believe powerfully 
they were the ones and they would be. Transubstantiation 
would do it. 

It was tradition that once made St. John the Apostle 
the author of Revelation. Here is how tradition operates. 

The book of St. John speaks of the Isle of Patmos. 
No one knew he was ever on the Isle of Patmos. But the 
book was written by St. John, and it speaks of Patmos, 
"a desert isle;" so St. John must have been there. It 
was surmised he was banished there. This became tra- 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 79 

dition. The theory is that of Eusebius, who was then 
quoted as authority on the subject. Tradition kept on 
growing. If John was banished to the Isle of Patmos 
there must have been a reason. They say St. John was 
spiritual adviser of the seven churches of Proconsular Asia. 
What St. Paul, who seems to be running all these things 
during the life of John, was doing with himself, they do 
not explain. John, however, was banished to the Isle of 
Patmos. Tradition kept on grov/ing. Tradition, in the 
course of time, canonized saints and furnished a special 
kind of horrible death and a beautiful address for each one. 
The Romans and Jews were all to blame. Now, when 
every saint had been beautifully butchered, and history 
had been created by tradition, it became rather tame and 
incredulous to say that St. John was banished to the Isle 
of Patmos by the Romans. Why should the people that 
dragged all' the other saints to spectacular horror, treat a 
Galilee fisherman to political exile in the Aegean sea by 
order of the Emperor who had the world on his hands ? 
Read profane history and you will discover that religion 
was the one point in which the Romans were not preju- 
diced. They were warriors. They killed captives of war. 
They were a nation of virile manhood. They thought so 
little of gods that they judged each one by the size of its 
clientage ; they took a political view. They did not inter- 
fere with the Greek mythology and try to substitute the 
Roman. They did not try to do away with the Jewish god 
or make converts of the Jews by the crucifix and the 
beheading ax and the halbert and the pyre. The Jews 
may have hit a saint with a fuller's club, but the real 
horrors w^ere the invention of the Christians when bigotry 



80 FIVE POINTS IN" FAITH. 

came to the throne. Why should a nation that had a 
dozen religions under its control and interfered with none 
have such a ghoulish care for an obscure sect, who were 
taught by St. James himself to '' honor the king," and were 
taught by their hypocritical leader, St. Paul, that all royal 
power was of divine origin ? Why should the Romans let 
each saint struggle along to the ripe old age of ninety- 
some years and then start the methods of the inquisition ? 

However, tradition says they did, and so the story 
that they banished John became rather incredible. So 
tradition got St. John into banishment in the following 
manner: It said John was ''spiritual adviser" of some 
churches in Proconsular Asia, and Domitian, the Roman 
proconsul, sent him to Rome, where he was put into a 
cauldron of boiling oil. "But the Almighty restrained the 
heat, as he did in the fiery furnace of old, and delivered 
him from his seemingly unavoidable destruction. " This, 
however, did not seem to be a hint to Domitian that John 
was ''divine," so he was banished to the Isle of Patmos. 

Tradition managed to get him safely and consistently 
on the Isle of Patmos, and furnish the horror, too. The 
Romans sent him there because the}" could not kill him. 
They were baffled. That accounted for it. They do not 
tell us how these butchers and burners and boilers became 
so lenient as to let St. John get off the desert Isle of Pat- 
mos to deliver his documents to the church at Ephesus. 
But tradition is becoming quite unfashionable. It is only 
quoted now when a professor can find one that is not 
ridiculous in the light of history, to brace up a sagging 
doctrine. They broke away from the Catholics but took a 
few "traditions" along. The}' have been dropping them 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 81 

by the way. The ones who believe there is brimstone in 
hell and topaz in heaven ; to whom Tophet is a holocaust 
of the good that die too young, and Paradise a miser's 
dream, still cling to tradition. Those who are being refined 
by free minded men are still trying to save a few ''tra- 
ditions. " They cling to Polycarp, and extract platitudes 
and circumlocution from "higher education" and mix 
them up and use tradition to bolster the Bible ; to save the 
apostles, the epistles and "John's " handbook of hell. The 
tradition of John's banishment, however, is now dropped. 
They became ashamed of it. So now they do not know 
who wrote Revelation. It is a "mystery." They say St. 
John wrote it, but have no reasons outside of tradition. 
They theorize. Therefore outsiders ma}^ theorize. If an 
unbeliever can say who wrote Revelation and can give 
reasons, he has more authority than the doctrinists. 

Revelation was the result of the same personality that 
is in the fourteen Epistles, the book of Acts and the book 
of Luke — Paul. That the same man who wrote the 
epistles helped or directed the man who wrote Luke and 
Acts is the evidence of the church. How they know, I do 
not know. I base my opinion on a stud}^ of the books. 
St. Paul, whoever he was, also wrote Revelation. Here 
are my reasons for saying so : 

First reason — The peculiarity of St. Paul was "revel- 
ation." A careful reading of the Bible shows it to be his 
strong point in upholding and governing his church. These 
books have a method of Revelation markedly different from 
anything else in the Bible — simultaneous or double barreled 
revelation ; such an improvement on ordinary revelation 
that it at once calls our attention. There are just three 



82 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

instances of it. St. Paul, we read in Acts, was on the road 
to Damascus. A light shone from heaven and a voice 
called to Paul : *'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?" 
And he said: ''Who art thou, Lord?" And the Lord 
said: ''I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." The men 
who were with Paul are said to have heard the voice. Saul 
lay on the ground ; and getting up, he said he w^as blind, 
and had the men lead him to Damascus. He was for three 
days without food or drink. Then the angel of the Lord 
appeared to a man in Damascus named Ananias, and 
revealed to him that Saul had had a revelation and was 
blind, and also revealed to him that Saul had had a vision 
or revelation that Ananias would come to cure him. The 
angel of the Lord told Ananias the street in which Paul 
(Saul) lived and told Ananias to go and cure him. The 
Lord and Ananias also had quite a chat about Paul's char- 
acteristics as a persecutor and his call to the new religion. 
This was evidently put in by Paul when he told the story 
to Luke for the purpose of impressing the reader with 
Paul's strong character. It was his recommendation from 
the mouth of God. 

The next instance of this kind of Revelation is that 
given to Peter in the early part of his ministry. This is 
the first instance : A vision appeared to a man named 
Cornelius at Cesarea. Peter was at that time traveling, 
and was in Joppa. The vision appeared to Cornelius, and 
he said : ''What is it, Lord ? And he said unto him : Thy 
prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before 
God. And now send men to Joppa and call for one Simon, 
a tanner, whose house is by the seaside ; he shall tell thee 
what thou oughtest to do." So Cornelius sent his men. 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 83 

As they approached the house in Joppa the next day, Peter 
went up on the housetop to eat, but fell asleep and saw a 
vision of a sheet full of unclean beasts lowered three 
times. The Lord told Peter to eat, but Peter, being a 
Jew, refused to eat what was considered unclean. And the 
Lord said : "What God hath cleansed, that call thou not 
common." It was then revealed to Peter in a secondary 
revelation that there were men at the door for him and he 
was instructed to go with them. Peter went with them, 
and of course discovered that God had recognized a man 
who was not a Jew, Cornelius, in a revelation. Peter then 
said: *'Ye know now that it is an unlawful thing for a 
man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of 
another nation ; but God hath shewed me that I should 
not call any man common or unclean." Cornelius, not 
being a Jew and one that was therefore unclean to Peter 
told his story that God had sent for Peter to tell Cornelius 
the gospel. While Peter told the gospel, "the Holy 
Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. And they of 
the circumcision (the Jews) which believed, were aston- 
ished, as many as came with Peter, because on the Gentiles 
also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost." 

What, you might well ask, has this to do with Paul ? 
It has this to do with him : Peter, who followed Christ, 
and Paul, who was converted, they say, five years after 
Christ's death, held opposite doctrines. Peter preached 
only to Jews, and claimed that in order to be a Christian it 
was necessary to be circumcised ; that is, to be a Jew who 
received Christ. Paul said that when he was converted, 
five years after the crucifixion, it was revealed to him that 
salvation was intended for Gentiles also. By reading the 



84 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

Bible we discover that when Peter came to visit Paul's 
church, at Antioch, twenty-two years after Christ's death, 
he refused to eat or associate with the Gentiles. This we 
discover through Paul's boasting to his Galatians how he 
rebuked Peter for his doctrines. He called Peter and 
Barnabas dissemblers. What Peter came to Antioch for, 
unless it was to protest, we can not know. Barnabas, 
however, Paul's companion, acknowledged Peter's action 
by copying him. They would now have us believe that Peter 
and Paul held the same doctrines ; that Peter and James 
preached to the Jews and were at the head of the branch of 
the church that was "of the circumcision," while Paul 
preached to Gentiles. But both, the}^ say, were of the 
same church. Now, if Peter followed Christ and was 
specially instructed by him, why was it necessary to give 
him a revelation in the early part of his ministry, teaching 
him the main point of the doctrine ? And if Peter was 
given this revelation, why did he, twenty-two years after 
Christ's death, still refuse to eat with Gentiles ? He 
would be a peculiar kind of "rock " on which to found a 
church, would he not ? The fact is that Paul, who carried 
out his conversion five years after Christ, kept away from 
Jerusalem where all the trouble was ; and being a Roman 
by birth, a Jew by descent, a Pharisee by training, and a 
Greek by accomplishment ; having political protection, 
religious prestige, and influence with the Greeks, saw his 
field to start a church among the Gentiles. 

He boasts to the Galatians that for seventeen years 
after he was converted he was not intimate with the 
apostles at Jerusalem. He states this to prove that he 
did not get his doctrine from them, but received his know- 



FIVE POINTS IN FAira. 85 

ledge of uncirciimcision by "revelation of Jesus Christ." 
If Christ came to earth and selected apostles for the sake 
of keeping them near him to learn his teachings, v^hy was 
it necessary to reveal a new doctrine to a young man, years 
after ? The fact is that Paul preached a different doctrine 
from that of the chief apostle of Christ. He got it up. In 
order to found this doctrine on Christ, he had Christ 
appear specially to him "as one born out of time." An 
"apostle" was one who was with Christ during his life 
time. Paul, as the head of his church, had to be an 
apostle, so he became an apostle by revelation. Tliat is 
how he became the Apostle Paul. There is nothing to 
show that Peter ever acknowledged Paul's doctrines except 
Paul's saying so. At least Peter did not live up to the 
acknowledgment. Paul's ministrj'- was a continual con- 
tention with the preachers who acknowledged Clirist 
according to the leadership of Peter and James, and who 
entered Paul's churches and told the people that Paul 
was teaching falsehood. This we see in the epistles. 

The book of Acts was written largely to deal with the 
history of Paul's life. They say it was v/ritten about A. D. 
63. If Peter was the eldest of the apostles during Christ's 
life, and Paul was a "young man" five years after his 
deatli, and this book is a history of Paul's accomplished 
ministry, Peter was either dead or in a state of harmless 
senility ; he was in a ripe old age. There is no knowhig 
what had become of him. Paul, having been successful, 
as might be judged by his methods, no doubt told Luke 
the "tradition" of Avhat the Lord had revealed to Pete r in 
his early career. Paul probably did not know that the 
ignorant church would canonize the private epistles he had 



86 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

written to his churches and leave evidence that Peter did 
not follow the teachings of the revelation. Acts, being 
written as a final history, Paul takes the opportunity to 
have the vision of Peter in it, and thus finally found his own 
doctrines on the *'rock" of Christ. If this revelation ever 
actually ocurred, Peter's ministry was a living lie. It was 
at least a living refutal of Paul's *' revealed" doctrine. 
What Christ came to earth for cannot, then, be explained. 
The church is founded on Paul the revelator and not Peter 
the rock. The revelation founded it. 

The other instance of this manner of revelation is that 
of Zacharias. The Lord's angel revealed to Zacharias that 
he would have a son. The angel also revealed to Mary 
that she would have a son, and revealed to Mary that it 
had also been given to Elizabeth to have a son. So Mary 
went and visited Elizabeth. These are the only three 
instances of double barreled revelation. They are in the 
books that the church itself recognizes as being written 
under Paul's influence. They are a peculiar improvement 
in revelation. They are the natural invention of an edu- 
cated and sophistic Pharisee who took hold of a church 
founded by fishermen and went them one better. 

One double barreled revelation surrounds Paul's con- 
version. One substantiates his new doctrine. One adds 
to the divinity of Christ and is what makes the book of 
Luke, which, ''tradition" says that Paul called *' my gospel," 
an improvement on the others. Paul knew where he was 
putting them. 

The ones surrounding Paul's divine call and Christ's 
divinity each consist of two principal and a subordinate 
revelation, and a miracle depriving a man of one of his 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 87 

senses. The one surrounding the divinity of Christ con- 
sists of two principal and a subordinate revelation. They 
are the product of one mind, — the mind which they con- 
cerned most, — a Pharisee, the founder of the Christian 
church. They occur in the three points of cardinal im- 
portance to Paul. Paul used his improved revelation 
significantly ; sparingly. Besides his double barreled 
revelations and his revealed doctrine and his special vision 
of Christ. Paul is the only one who says that Christ 
appeared to five hundred at once. The others tell 
different stories of Christ's appearance to the apostles. 
They know nothing of this principal appearance. Paul 
told it to his ignorant church, who had no means of find- 
ing out. All this shows that Paul was particularly strong 
on revelation. 

Second reason — The epistles, Acts and Revelation, 
allowing for the different natures of the subjects, are in the 
same literary style. They are full of ^' Lo " and ** Behold." 
This is characteristic of these books. 

Third reason — It is a peculiarity of Paul's method in 
his epistles that before he chastises the church or offers 
advice, he gives a flattering prelude to please their vanity. 
This is characteristic of the admonitions to each of the 
seven churclies in the book of Revelation. Pie praises 
them and "warns them against certain members ; he flatters 
one church on its resistance to the Nicolaitans, a sect that 
opposed Paul's revealed ** doctrines," and admonishes the 
rich church to buy treasures in heaven. This commodity, 
no doubt, could be obtained from Paul. All this, of course, 
IS supposed to be the address of Christ. Each admonition 



88 FIVE POINTS IX FAITH. 

is preceded by flattery. Revelation has the same char- 
acteristics as the epistles written by Paul. 

Fourth reason — In the sixth chapter of II. Corinthi- 
ans, Paul indulges in what he calls glor^'ing, and at the 
same time humbly rebuking himself for glorj'ing and then 
glorying some more. Then beginning in the twelfth chap- 
ter he suddenly breaks in, and says : -'It is not expedient 
for me, doubtless, to glory. I will come to visions and 
revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above 
fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell ; or 
whether out of the body I cannot tell ; God knoweth) 
such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew 
such a man (whether in the body or out of the body I can- 
not tell ; God knoweth.) How that he was caught up into 
paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not 
lawful for man to utter. Of such a one will I glor}'; yet 
of myself I will not glory, but in mine infimities. For 
though I would desire to glor}-, I shall not be a fool ; for I 
will say the truth ; but now I forbear, lest any man should 
think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he 
heareth me, and lest I should be exalted above measure 
through the abundance of the revelations, there was given 
a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, 
i-est I should be exalted above measure. For this I be- 
sought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me." 
Then Paul goes on to talk of other matters. 

Imagine a man sitting down and writing a letter to his 
church and purposely letting them into the secret that he 
knew the secret of heaven as if he were going to tell it, 
and suddenly saying ''yet I forbear." If he intended to 
tell them and changed his mind, why did he nof cast aside 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 89 

the small piece of parchment and not send it ? There is 
motive in such things. Paul was not the passive weather- 
cock of emotion he would have them believe. He lets 
them know he is possessed of the secrets of Paradise and 
forbears because, forsooth, he is so humble he fears they 
will look up to him too much. He sends them this written 
slip of the tongue. And what more is necessary ? It is 
worse vanity than if he told them the revelation. They 
know now that he knows the secrets of heaven, and withal 
he gets credit for superhuman humility. He says the 
revelation was given him to be a thorn in the flesh ; to try 
him ; no doubt to purify his soul, and exhibit to the 
churches how strong he was. Before this, he had been 
scoring the preachers who seemed at last to be getting a 
strong influence over his Corinthians. When his argument 
is at an end he winds up with the revelation surprise. The 
other preachers would have no show after that. 

Now, this method of saying you know something and 
then forbearing, is characteristic. Not every one would 
think of it. Let us observe Revelation. 

In the tenth chapter, when the seven thunders had 
uttered their voices and John or Paul was about to write 
it, he says he ''heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, 
seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and 
write them not." Why should Christ give a revelation to 
a man to have it written down for humanity, and in bring- 
ing about the heavenly panorama, why should he have 
seven thunders utter their voices merely for the purpose of 
telling Paul or John not to write them down ? What would 
be God^s object ? Of course John or Paul would be into 
the secret. This corresponds with Paul's methods, docs it 



90 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

not ? On the theory that St. Paul wrote Revelation, and 
had it in mind when he wrote his epistles, does it not cor- 
roborate his statement that he knew certain things that 
were *' unlawful" to speak. It justifies him in writing the 
rest. Why is Revelation said to be written by St. John '* the 
Divine" instead of "the Apostle" ? Because Paul claimed 
that he did not know whether the man he saw was in the 
f^esh or out of the flesh. He puts it in parenthesis twice. 
Was this Revelation written by John the Apostle ? No ; 
because it has an introduction speaking of this author in 
the third person. If some one else wrote the introduction, 
some one else probably wrote the Revelation. That some- 
body took down what John, who was in the flesh or out of 
the flesh, gave to somebody in a '* trance." Revelation 
and Luke alone have introductions. This is the result of 
the same personality. Why did not Paul put his name to 
it ? Because he was so humble, and moreover, it was more 
effective in straightening out the difficulties in his seven 
churches to have the Revelation come from Christ through 
an intermediate, rather than as a dream of Paul, the party 
concerned. It is the revelation of St. John. Why did not 
the translators and canonizers make it the revelation to St. 
John, if it was to him? They must have had theories about 
it. Why did Paul put that queer and falsely unintentional 
reference in his letter to the Corinthians and send it with 
no seeming object ? Because he had it in his mind to write 
Revelation. When]he got Revelation finished he prefixed a 
lot of threats and timely admonitions to the seven churches, 
fixed it up to suit his accidental reference then lying in the 
hands of the Corinthians, and gave it as the message of 
Christ through St. John, "the divine." Paul was so hum- 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 91 

ble. The book of Revelation is largely a travesty on the 
Roman Empire. It might not have been policy to have 
his name to it. The churches would know however. They 
would guess at it and discern Paul's greatness through the 
epistle. 

Fifth reason — It has been said even by Christians, that 
the man who wrote Revelation was either inspired or 
crazy. Paul was not exactly sane. It is only necessary 
to read the 8th, 9th and loth chapters I. Corinthians to see 
that. In the 8th chapter he commences to lay down the 
theory of eating meat offered to idols, and gets into a deep 
philosophical argument. Then he suddenly exclaims, *' Am 
I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus 
Christ ^our Lord? Are ye not my work in the Lord?" 
What is the occasion of all this? He suddenly starts to 
tell them he has as much right to stop work, he and Bar- 
nabas, and live on the church and to ''lead about a sister, 
a wife," as Peter has. It must have suddenly occurred 
to his mind that they had questioned him about this. He 
gives them warm argument upon it for over a chapter and 
in the last part of the next chapter, he takes up his argu- 
ment on idols meat and finishes. Read those chapters, 
remembering that the breaking into chapters is a work of 
the compilers. Regard it as a continuous letter by Paul 
and one of two things is evident. After he had gotten into 
strange and sentimental argument on brotherly love, in his 
meat philosophy, he decides it would then be allowable to 
indulge in some execration to justify himself in other matters. 
It would be taken well, because he had gotten them at 
this point into a spirit of compassion. Afterward he becomes 
as humble as ever, and tells what he started to say. Paul 



92 FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 

was either crazy, or devilishly deceitful. You can read 
his epistles and see the law of action and reaction, like the 
alternating moods of emotional madness. To say he was 
crazy is only putting the most charitable construction 
upon the Epistles and Revelation. 

Sixth reason — St. John is held up to us as a model of 
mildness — the "beloved apostle." His book is certainly 
the mildest of all. His literary style argues his character. 
And yet, men who make a pretense of the ability of literary 
analysis; who study Shakespere and find hidden beauties 
in Browning, and pretend to know literary science as some 
men know a good horse; who have all the stock adjectives 
of literary criticism and dilletante writing at tongue's 
end, tell us that this mild man wrote the diabolical vindic- 
tiveness called Revelation. It would seem impossible. 

Eighth reason — All these reasons may not be conclu- 
sive. The church assumes that John wrote Revelation 
and does not know a reason. I believe Paul wrote it and 
know a few reasons. These reasons alone would not make 
me decided however, if it were not for a stronger one. 
For man}' hundred years the church has been arguing 
about the authorship of Revelation. They want to tell. 
Now there are points in the bible offering one theory of 
who wrote it. There is a man who says he knew all that 
could be put in such a book. He knew more. He was 
acquainted with all that was necessary to write Revelation, 
and said so. Now Revelation is written and is ''inspired." 
Therefore its secrets are lawful. The ''unlawful" part 
in a divine sense is suppressed. If Paul knew this, and 
it was "lawful," as is proven, then it was not only his 
privilege but his duty to write it. Among all the theories 



FIVE POINTS IN FAITH. 93 

as to who wrote Revelation there is one that offers itself 
like a sign post. A man could discover it in a week. 
And preachers who pore a life out over it's pages and com- 
mentaries containing arguments much farther fetched than 
this theory would be, do not refer to it. St. Paul wrote 
most of the New Testament. Why? Not because the 
others did not write, but because the councils that com- 
piled the Bible selected his writings. They liked them. 
His spirit, false logic, and general method appealed to the 
founders of the dark ages. The church does not want to 
discover that St. Paul wrote Revelation. St. Paul wrote : 
I. Corinthians, II. Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Phil- 
ippians, Colossians, I. Thessalonians, II. Thessalonians, 
L Timothy, II. Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Hebrews. 
He superintended Acts and Luke. Mark was the servant 
of his co-worker Barnabas. If it were admitted that St. 
Paul wrote Revelation, there would not be much left. 



' 20 15^7 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Feb. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



